Cameron McNatt and Chris Retzler, Co-founders of Mocean Energy: “deliver clean power to some of the toughest places on the planet".
Meet Cameron and Chris, co-founders of Mocean Energy
1. Describe your startup in two sentences?
Mocean Energy develops technology that generates renewable energy from ocean waves to deliver clean power in some of the toughest places on the planet – off-grid applications in the ocean – and to decarbonise overlooked locations at the forefront of climate change – islands.
Our technology is robust, reliable, high performance, and has been vetted by independent experts.
2. What gave you the inspiration?
My background is in hydrodynamics and software development. Early on, Chris and I discussed using the shape of the hulls to make our wave energy converters more responsive in waves and thus generate more power. We capitalised on my software modelling skills to write a program that searched for new shapes and returned optimal solutions. In the beginning this was very crude – just trapezoids, but it ultimately became the basis of our new patented hull designs that produce 2-4x (or more) power per size than previous wave energy technologies.
3. How did you meet?
Chris was a co-founder and Principal Scientist at Pelamis, which was a pioneer in wave energy technology but unfortunately went into administration in 2014. At that time, I was finishing my PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Following Pelamis, Chris was working on a project at the University, and they gave him a desk in the same office as me. Pure fortuity.
4. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
One of our biggest successes has been building and testing our prototype, called “Blue X”. It was such an incredible feeling to see the machine that Chris and I created as a CAD model in software be a real, giant thing… that actually worked!
But the creation of Blue X certainly was not done by Chris and me alone. One of my biggest satisfactions is building an amazing team of passionate, skilled and purpose driven people who are aligned in our vision!
This is probably not something we should say to investors, but our biggest challenge has been raising investment… We have great confidence in our technology, and we can deliver complex projects successfully. Commercial moment continues to build, and it feels like we are hitting the right time in the offshore markets we’re addressing. But the challenges of wave energy, and the unfortunate failures of the past haunt us a bit.
I think that’s starting to change as we continue to demonstrate technical step-change innovation and hit commercial milestones.
5. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
Our primary impact is CO2 mitigation. We measure this through life-cycle assessments of our technology and projects versus the alternative.
In offshore projects, where our “Blue Star” technology powers off-grid equipment, we are replacing subsea cables, which have high embedded carbon, are installed with CO2-intensive vessels, and disturb the seabed. Depending on the project, using Blue Star instead could save 10,000-70,000 TCO2 per project.
When providing power for islands, our larger-scale machine, “Blue Horizon”, will often displace diesel power generation. We estimate that compared to diesel, we can save 780 gCO2/kWh. In 10 years, we’re targeting 100 MW installed, saving 200,000+ TCO2/year.
6. How has Covid affected your business?
COVID hit while were building Blue X – the fabrication stopped for a few months, and then was slower than it could have been otherwise.
Most of our team were desk based: design engineers, numerical modellers, etc. who could work from home. While being flexible to the new work-home-life balance, we all wanted to progress the technology and not slow down.
7. When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?
I always wanted to create a cool technology thing…
8. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
I’m so fortunate to be doing something that I love, it’s hard to know what I’d do if it wasn’t this… but I really enjoy working for a start-up, working with renewables and the ocean… so maybe tidal or offshore wind?
9.What would you save in a fire?
Definitely my wife and kids – leave all the stuff.
10. Who is your role model / greatest influence? And why?
My Dad, who sadly died in 2013. He believed in me, and encouraged me to pursue engineering. He had tremendous love of reading, and got me into sailing. He had a challenging life, but through that he taught me that finding joy is the most important thing you can do.
11. What is your happy track?
Lose Yourself to Dance – Daft Punk (feat. Pharrell Williams)
10. What are your company values?
Our company values are: trust, expertise, awesomeness and morals.
11. What are you most looking forward to in 2023?
In 2023, I can’t wait to get Blue X back in the water, do more testing, and get amazing photos.