Sea Change: Activate Fellows and the Blue Economy

Photo: Nora Carol Photography

Any discussion about climate change is a discussion about our oceans and vice-versa. Oceans are at once the victim of our consumption patterns and carbon emissions, resulting in acidification, sea level rise, plastic pollution, and a tremendous resource that can help us reach net-zero emissions by mid-century and build sustainable supply chains to slow the rate of climate change. 

This week, government, business, and NGO leaders delve into those challenges and opportunities at the World Ocean Summit, putting the blue economy into focus. And this year marks the beginning of the United Nations’ Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which is bringing together scientists, policy-makers, and businesses to create a framework to ensure that ocean science can support and guide how we consume, leverage, and manage ocean resources for many more decades to come. 

So it’s an apt time to celebrate Activate Fellows whose innovations, directly and indirectly, contribute to the blue economy—and to highlight the ways that ocean-focused innovations can be tools for climate mitigation. 

In fact, research from the Ocean Panel found that ocean-based mitigation options could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by 2030 and by more than 11 billion tons annually by 2050. Ocean-based emissions mitigation solutions could account for a quarter of the efforts needed to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. Activate Fellows are working in the top four of the five specific mitigation routes that the panel calls out:

• Ocean-based renewable energy (offshore wind, wave and, tidal power)

• Sustainable fisheries and a shift “towards low carbon ocean-based protein”

• Protecting coastal marine ecosystems

• Ocean-based transport

• Carbon storage in the seabed

Ocean-based renewable energy 
Renewable energy generation—offshore floating and fixed wind power, as well as tidal and wave energy—represents the biggest lever for ocean-based global emissions reduction, according to the Ocean Panel report. And a recent report by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that the total marine energy resource (wave, tidal, ocean current, ocean thermal, river) in the United States is equivalent to approximately 57 percent of 2019 U.S. generation. Wave energy represents 34 percent of that share. Yet, while interest and investment in wave energy were high during the first wave of cleantech development in the aughts and early 2010s, the industry is maturing slowly.

Marcus Lehmann, Cohort 2015 fellow and co-founder of CalWave Power Technologies Inc. (CalWave), attributes that slower development curve to the high costs and complexity of testing commercial projects offshore at scales that match the wave resource. By comparison, wind and solar can be tested in indoor labs and wind test sites. “Going too big, too fast, is one reason the earlier wave energy startups failed,” he says.

Testing CalWave’s WEC in the lab

Scaling wave energy into a consistent, reliable form of renewable energy would require time and thorough, incremental testing—and a strong field of innovators. 

The Department of Energy recognized that and announced the U.S. Wave Energy Prize in 2015 to identify promising technologies. CalWave’s team won $500,000 in that competition. It was then among the teams that the DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) selected for a shared $12 million award in 2017 to advance wave technology further. CalWave is using that award to launch a six-month open-water pilot this year to test a scaled version of its wave energy converter (WEC), as highlighted in a recent WPTO report.

Lehmann compares today’s wave energy industry to wind energy in the 1990s when large turbines were very new to the American landscape, and the first commercial demonstration projects were just being built. One of the key breakthroughs for wind energy was pitch and yaw control systems, which ensure efficient operations and the ability to quickly shut down in storm conditions. Likewise, CalWave’s design combines novel control methods similar to how pitch control is applied to wind turbines. While most wave energy systems only control the electrical generator, CalWave’s design incorporates autonomous load management capabilities to control the energy input into the WEC directly. CalWave also uses a digital twin application, which creates a virtual model of the physical devices to allow for a capital-efficient system design. This is critical to becoming cost-competitive with other, mature renewable energy.

CalWave’s pilot site, ready for testing, with anchors installed

CalWave’s pilot will take place in the waters off Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

“This is a really important step for us to validate our WEC’s performance and reliability in the field and to gain operational experience,” says Lehmann. 

The collected data and experience will inform the design of CalWave’s next-generation WEC, which it is developing with support from a 2019 DOE award. CalWave plans to connect that next-gen WEC to the grid at a new wave energy test site, PacWave. Located on the Oregon coast, the facility will produce up to 20 MW of electricity.

Learn more about CalWave at this March 10 event.

Ocean-based protein
While CalWave is on a mission to unlock the vast and steady carbon-free power from ocean waves, Trophic is making progress in unlocking the oceans’ abundant supply of plant-based protein as a replacement for animal protein. The Ocean Panel study notes that this shift offsets carbon emissions from animal agriculture and supports public health through improved diets and cleaner air.

Amanda Stiles in the lab, with seaweed protein.

Co-founded by Cohort 2020 fellow Amanda Stiles and Beth Zotter, Trophic is commercializing protein from two red seaweed types. Seaweed grows and captures carbon quickly and does not require fertilizer. Trophic’s vision is to establish seaweed farms at sea. As Zotter told Grist recently, “seaweed farms covering an area the size of Massachusetts would supply enough protein to replace all the beef consumed in the world.”

This approach will expand seaweeds’ footprint, therefore capturing more carbon, and conserve important marine habitat. 

Such sustainable sourcing is important, but it’s not the only reason Zotter who brings a background in techno-economic modeling and aquaculture R&D, and Stiles, a biochemist who previously ran research at Ripple Foods, are so excited about the power of seaweed protein.

Today, most plant-based meat and dairy alternatives rely on soy or terrestrial plant protein, which do not necessarily convey the same taste or functional properties of the real thing. For example, soy protein holds 3x its weight in water, whereas Trophic’s protein holds 10x. Water holding capacity is important because it supports juiciness, something consumers look for in meat substitutes (well, and meat, too!). And when cooked, the seaweed protein transitions from red to brown, also mimicking meat. 

Red dulce, collected on a rocky beach in Maine

Besides these benefits, seaweeds are up to 45 percent protein—giving them a nutritional leg-up on soybeans—and the proteins Trophic is harvesting have a savory, umami taste.

Trophic has just hit an important milestone: moving from making grams, in test tubes, to producing kilograms of the seaweed protein concentrate using industrial equipment. This means the startup is ready to start commercial-scale production. “This is a major derisking event for us because it shows we can manufacture commercially,” says Zotter.

Protecting coastal marine ecosystems
Other Activate cohort companies, including Takachar, Nitricity, and Radical Plastics, are building new agricultural tools and inputs, the benefits of which will include lowering marine pollution from farms and industrial agriculture. These benefits, in turn, will bolster ecosystem services in coastal areas and reduce coastal eutrophication, according to the Ocean Panel.

Takachar and Nitricity are both focused on reducing agricultural carbon emissions—while also supporting crop output and helping farmers avoid nitrogen-heavy runoff, which can cause eutrophication in the ocean. That’s a problem that could worsen as the climate changes.

Takachar is developing a mobile reactor that can turn agricultural residue—such as rice husks or stover, that farmers may otherwise burn, generating carbon emissions and degrading air quality—into valuable commodities that they can sell for additional income. The system, developed by Cohort 2018 fellow and Takachar CEO Kevin Kung, can also create biochar-fertilizer blends, which farmers can use as nutrient-rich fertilizer to support and sustain soil health. This displaces the need for conventional fertilizer, which can degrade watersheds. Last year, Schmidt Marine Technologies, an Activate sponsor and a Schmidt Family Foundation program that supports solutions for ocean health, named Takachar a Coastal Pollution Challenge winner for its efforts to reduce nutrient pollution.

Nitricity’s test filed, framed by a reminder of the hydrological system.

Nitricity also has conventional fertilizer in its crosshairs. Co-founded by Cohort 2020 fellows Jay Schwalbe and Joshua McEnaney, along with Nicolas Pinkowski and Brian Rohr, Nitricity produces ready-to-use nitrogen with only air, water, and renewable electricity. Because it is made using a fossil-fueled process, conventional nitrogen fertilizer has a very significant climate impact—up to 6 percent of global CO2eq emissions, when the CO2 from its production, distribution, and application are tallied. 

Nitricity’s approach, which can mitigate 80 percent of conventional fertilizer emissions, uses renewable energy to produce fertilizer on-site and on-demand. Plus, the startup developed a way to integrate its fertilizer with an irrigation system for more frequent applications at lower quantity, to reduce runoff. In a recent pilot test, Nitricity produced a crop with a yield that matched the control crop but received 40 percent less fertilizer. Based on this result, Nitricity can improve water quality while saving farmers money.

Radical Plastics, co-founded by Cohort 2020 fellow Kristin Taylor, is developing a product also designed to save farmers money, support strong yields, and improve water quality. Radical Plastics blends conventional plastics with a proprietary, naturally-occurring catalyst to make plastic compounds that are completely biodegradable in the environment. When used as an agricultural mulch film, it offers the benefits of conventional plastic films—retaining soil moisture and reducing weeds—but will later completely biodegrade in any active microbial environment such as soil or aquatic environments, reducing plastic pollution into the watershed.

Ocean-based transport
Reducing carbon emissions associated with ocean-based transport will be like...turning a ship around. But there are many ways to approach it, from alternative fuels to hybrid combustion systems and even new hull designs and clever uses of wind, waves, or tides to increase efficiency.

Eliminating carbon emissions requires carbon-neutral fuels or batteries powered by renewable electricity. In 2019, Noon Energy, founded by Cohort 2018 fellow Christopher Graves, won the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Orcelle Award via the Ocean Exchange, based on the potential for Noon’s battery technology to power zero-emission vessels. 

Noon Energy is pioneering a highly energy-dense rechargeable battery technology that enables economical long-duration energy storage. Ultimately, Graves says Noon’s battery could be used to power electric-propulsion vessels for transport—the battery would be recharged while docked. But a nearer-term application could be to charge the battery while at sea to provide electric power to the ship’s systems while it is in port. This would avoid pollution from ship engines running while in port, a practice coming under regulation in some municipalities with heavy marine traffic.

For those who live inland, oceans can seem irrelevant. Other. But these few examples show how much we depend on our oceans and how improving terrestrial systems can improve ocean health. They give a glimpse of how a vibrant blue economy can support larger efforts to address climate change. 

These examples of our fellows’ innovations show that a healthy blue economy is about more than offshore wind turbines and sustainable fishing practices. 

But we are running out of time to heal the oceans and reinvent our world through systems that work symbiotically with marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Thankfully, our fellows are on the job, and as the blue economy grows and gains more attention, so too will the links between responding to climate change and supporting ocean health.