Born in the wind and raised in the water, Aquantis was formed in 2011 to develop and commercialize marine current turbines. Aquantis is built on the founders’ three-decade legacy of successful wind power technology development, manufacturing and building power projects around the world. This deep knowledge is now applied to advancing ocean current power generation, joining with wind and solar toward displacing carbon fuels and helping to mitigate the burdens of climate change and degradation of the biosphere.
Headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, the Aquantis team comprises technology and business professionals working in partnership with the National Laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy and with the U.S. Navy. Since 2012, Aquantis and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) have collaborated on ocean turbine design, drawing on MHI’s leadership in building submarines, unmanned underwater vehicles, and offshore oil and gas facilities.
Aquantis adheres to corporate governance principles and best practices which promote sustainability related technology development and commercialization and provides accountability and control systems consistent with the highest standards.
Background
Prior to Aquantis, management created technologies for four generations of advanced wind turbines and the products and manufacturing capacity which led to the entry of both General Electric and United Technologies into the wind energy industry, in 2002 and 2010, respectively. The team’s record of success was to a great extent attributable to its relentless focus on driving down the cost of energy (COE) through technological advances and operating efficiencies. No single factor is more important to the commercial viability of a renewable technology than its COE.
Management’s leadership with Zond Systems (Zond, 1980-2000) and Clipper Windpower (Clipper, 2001–2010) demonstrated that with unrelenting focus on innovation, renewable energy technologies can achieve mainstream competitiveness forming the basis for multi-billion dollar global industries.
Aquantis is now positioned to launch ocean power generation, ushering in a major new segment of predictable renewable energy to complement the intermittency of wind and solar and help meet the surge in demand for renewables.
Resource Potential
The marine hydrokinetic (MHK) energy sector is now emerging and its potential is vast. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the power contained in the world’s ocean is equivalent to 5,000 GW worldwide. In response to this renewable energy opportunity the UK Crown Estate has issued 1800MW of tidal site allocations. Terrestrial renewables, primarily wind and solar, are in rapid deployment around the world – new investment in renewable energy generated electric power exceeded investment in fossil fuel power by $156B in 2015 ($286B vs. $130B). Yet, the vast kinetic energy of the oceans remains untapped and prime for power extraction. Aquantis Turbines (AQ Turbines) are designed to fill that need, by deployment in both the tidal and constant (gyre) currents, along coastal regions where population is dense and electric power demand is high and growing rapidly.
Launching the Aquantis Series Turbine comes at a time when, due to the imperative for dramatic near term reduction in CO2 emissions, electric utilities, energy companies and financial institutions, facing a devaluation or stranding of their carbon fuel-based assets, are more and more resorting to divestment, write-down and/or effecting sharp cutbacks in spending on future fossil fuel projects.
This is simultaneously accelerating capital flows and new supportive government policies toward renewable energy technologies, stimulating a powerful wave of market demand for renewable energy products. Aquantis aims to lead the way with technologies for the new industry of ocean energy.