Lars Rinnan (00:03.185)
So welcome to The World in 2029, the podcast where we explore how today's innovations are shaping our future. I'm your host Lars. I'm on a mission to spread positive insights into how today's pressing issues like climate change, hunger, disease, or poverty are being solved by exponential technologies that most people haven't even heard about. I've worked in artificial intelligence for the last 10 years and I've helped numerous tech startups. So this is a topic close to my heart. And today's episode is about water, not the calm, serene kind, but the existential kind. We live on a blue planet, yet billions lack drinking water. And the very technology meant to solve that desalination has itself become a climate problem. But what if the power of the ocean could give us clean, affordable water without emissions. And that's where Ocean Oasis comes in and why I'm thrilled to have Sebastian Feinblatt with me today. He's the co-founder and co-CEO at Ocean Oasis. Sebastian is an energy expert with over a decade of international experience in strategy, markets, policy and regulation across renewable energy and water sectors.

And he's based on the Canary Islands in Spain. Welcome to the show, Sebastian.

Sebastian (01:34.37)
Thank you very much Lars.

Lars Rinnan (01:36.569)
It's fantastic to have you on. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Sebastian (01:41.388)
Yeah, it's great to have the opportunity to share more about what we do and why we do it.

Lars Rinnan (01:47.077)
Yeah, exactly. fantastic. So one of the things I've been wondering about is, I mean, what happens when taps run drive? And we've seen this lately. The world is heading toward a brutally simple equation. Population is going up and available fresh water is going down. And that's a bad equation. We've seen cities like Cape Town, Los Angeles, already flirting with day zero.

And desalination, our only scalable tool, still consumes fossil energy and produces toxic brine. So Sebastian, when you look at global water scarcity today, what worries you the most? How close is the world to widespread day zero scenarios?

Sebastian (02:24.29)
Yeah.

Sebastian (02:35.758)
I think the biggest worry is that it can happen in places that we never expected. So places that have been suffering droughts before, they've been developing slowly desalination when they're close to shore or just understanding how it goes. But suddenly things change quite fast. And suddenly there places that never had experienced a drought before are starting to face that. And the places that experience one drought every 10 years, they're starting to experience it.

every year. So it's becoming more frequent and more intense in very, very, very large places and everywhere basically. that's the first part. The second is, as you were mentioning, desalination works perfectly whenever you're close to shore, but that's where most of the population lives. So it makes a lot of sense. You can use water from oceans, desalinate it, and use it directly to

to feed the population, also to feed industry and agriculture. And I think that's also a really interesting thing. It's not only about drinking water, which is, of course, the first and main use of water, but all the other activities require water from agriculture, which is a clear one, but also lots of industrial activities, including energy.

use a lot of water. Actually 80 % of the water consumed goes into agriculture and industry. Only 20 % goes to population. So the problem is widespread, it's urgent and sometimes urgency is not transferred into the path that we are able to build new infrastructure, especially when you do it on land.

Lars Rinnan (04:04.999)
Mmm.

Lars Rinnan (04:17.519)
Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned that this is also happening in regions or cities that we wouldn't expect it to happen. What are examples of those kind of cities or regions?

Sebastian (04:30.382)
So, water pressure, it's a combination of...

population moving, basically concentrating close to shore, getting a lot of activity, getting, for instance, even if it's tourism or any other industrial activity combined with more population, suddenly there's areas where water becomes scarce. And that's been growing with areas where traditionally been water scarce, but also go to the north of Europe and suddenly you have a couple of bad summers and the water

availability becomes lower. It's not something that just becomes from one year to another, but we have started to see those situations in places where it's normally rainy and green.

Lars Rinnan (05:17.543)
So what would you say about day zero then? I mean, how close is the world to widespread day zero scenarios?

Sebastian (05:27.936)
I think it's not widespread, because I think one thing from climate change is that it's...

It's not a general impact on the global face. We just making things more radical. So some places are becoming day zero. Some places are getting more rains or getting worse rains in terms of water manageability. So basically we're getting big storms and then nothing for a long time. And those big storms are not helping. So what we're seeing is that

there's more and more places getting closer to day zero and that's going to increase and gets faster basically. Day zero is terrible and we've been talking with people in South Africa that were exploring, I mean they're trying to fight that situation by that time. That was a bit of an eye-opening situation because whenever you talk about desalination you talk about cost per cubic meter and you try to save a couple of cents per cubic.

And we were talking with the plant manager for a big tuna company. And he was like, yeah, for 10 years, my job was just saving a couple of cents per cubic. And suddenly there was no water. And the two cents, there were no, there has no relevance at all. You just need water to keep the whole factory going.

Lars Rinnan (06:42.919)
Mm.

Sebastian (06:49.974)
And then the value, the actual value of water became clear. It's not about the actual price because prices, normally, especially in water, not reflecting the actual value, but the value of water. It's, it's immense. You need, just need to stop activities. People can't drink. mean, it's, it's life threats if there's no water. So realizing that when there's no water available, everything stops. That was a life changing for them. And, and, and this person was just sharing, yeah, suddenly one cent become

became nothing, we were talking tens of dollars and no one cared about the price, it's just having water. And I think that's important and that's how it reflects in the population when water becomes just a, yeah, availability of water is a different thing.

Lars Rinnan (07:25.275)
Yeah, exactly.

Lars Rinnan (07:35.675)
Yeah, it's so true. mean, it's really hard to imagine, you know, running out of drinking water. That is really alarming. This was in South Africa.

Sebastian (07:49.442)
That's what it's in South Africa.

Lars Rinnan (07:50.915)
Right, okay. But I mean, desalination has also itself become, you know, environmentally harmful. I don't think most people actually realize that. Can you explain why?

Sebastian (08:04.878)
So desalination is a process and the way we do it now, I'll just focus that way. It's a process that requires a lot of pressure and to build pressure, you need to use a lot of energy. You normally use pumps, those pumps are getting better on efficiency, but still use a lot of energy. And then with that pressure, basically filter, I'm making it quite simple, just filter the water out and you get fresh water. And then you've got a by-product, which is brine, which is very salty water.

There is a process in many places where the water quality is decent, the ocean water quality is decent, that they're reducing the chemicals used in that process. So the brine that goes out, it's becoming cleaner and cleaner, but in the past it got a lot of chemicals. And in some areas where the water quality is not too good, they're still using them. So what you do is you have a...

two main problems and becoming three. The first one is the energy consumption. The amount of energy that desalination requires, it's immense. I'm here in the Canaries, as you said, and 10 % of all the electricity produced in Gran Canaria goes directly to the desalination plants. it's 10 % of all the energy in the island goes there. And some islands go up to 20. So.

Lars Rinnan (09:09.447)
Mm.

Lars Rinnan (09:18.597)
Wow, 10 %?

Lars Rinnan (09:25.767)
Wow.

Sebastian (09:27.166)
That's impressive and they need to double the capacity of desalination in the next years and naturally triple it by 2050. And that makes the energy system one of the key barriers because the energy system in areas that are not extremely good connected to renewal energy with a beautiful grid connections are normally relying on diesel or similar sources to run the grid.

And that makes the solution, the desalination solution, quite polluting. It produces a lot of CO2 and also makes it quite expensive. So that's one of the first barriers and one of the main ones that we see. The second one is the brine management. So this very salty water, when it's not managed properly, it damages the sea base, so the marine environment. And when your volumes are growing and growing, that impact grows.

Lars Rinnan (10:01.415)
Mm.

Sebastian (10:25.696)
It's a solution that, I mean, there is a solution that it's visible. We just need to build more infrastructure to make sure that that brine dissolves properly. But in many places that has not been the case. So as of today, it's a big problem. And the third one, which appeared a bit not that obvious, it's land availability.

We're talking to use the first line of shore in many places for desalination And this line of shore, it's normally quite busy. It's the places where people like to have their houses, hotels like to be located, or many other activities like to be in that area, logistics. mean, everything is quite crowded in the first kilometer from shore.

Lars Rinnan (10:46.695)
Mm.

Sebastian (11:10.508)
probably globally. So in that sense, using more space for desalination is becoming a problem, especially when you have one plant and you want to expand. You just realize that things around will not just move because you want to increase your plants. And that makes it difficult not only for the desalination itself, but also for renewable energy sources that you could think you could put together. OK, we've got solar. Solar, it's amazing. The cost of solar, it's beautiful. But if you want to put solar around the desalination plant,

Lars Rinnan (11:17.756)
Mm.

Sebastian (11:40.055)
you need to move a lot from that area. It's not possible to get consistent amount of solar panels. And one limitation from solar, it's the land you need for production. You need a lot of square kilometers to produce the amount of water we're talking about. So it's not a small solar plant connected to a desalination plant will solve the problem. And then if they have grid limitation, you need to connect close to the area. So the land becomes another.

Lars Rinnan (11:42.759)
Mm.

Lars Rinnan (11:56.977)
Yeah.

Sebastian (12:10.108)
a big limitation factor.

Lars Rinnan (12:12.775)
Is that also the case for cities like Dubai, who definitely rely heavily on desalination?

Sebastian (12:21.762)
So cities like Dubai I mean, when close to the city is an issue, then you need to build long grids and then you have an empty space and available space and you deal with other environmental issues to keep the solar covered. But basically in those areas where land is available and you're able to build the grid, it's just a cost issue. You can do it.

but it will not be competitive with other solutions like ours.

Lars Rinnan (12:54.215)
Exactly. So do you think we underestimate what water scarcity does to the society? mean, terms of migration or food production or energy systems?

Sebastian (13:04.27)
I think you know it, and it's a case when it doesn't affect us directly now, we don't think about it. And then the problem, think the biggest problem is that building this infrastructure, especially on land, takes a lot of time. So whenever...

Suddenly there's a year that doesn't rain, okay we start to worry. Second year it doesn't rain, we get a bigger concern. Third year politicians start talking about we need to build more desalination. And then it takes 10 years to build the plant. And then it's too late.

Lars Rinnan (13:37.095)
10 years???

Sebastian (13:38.53)
If you build something on land from scratch, you need to find a place, you need to find the energy, you need to start getting the permits on land and then start building. And there's a lot of infrastructure to build. So the average we've been seeing here, it's 10 years or more. So what I think that's the main concern. It's not that we're not worried and that we don't realize or we don't see the patterns is that when we realize we need to start building, it's already too late.

Lars Rinnan (13:45.927)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Lars Rinnan (14:04.027)
Hmm. That's a really good point. And of course, 10 years is a long time. You know, it's longer than most election cycles in most countries, which is probably a problem here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. So why isn't water scarcity treated with, you know, the same urgency as climate or energy? Is it invisible?

Sebastian (14:14.623)
and I will be doing some of this. It is.

Sebastian (14:31.759)
I think one is coming back, it's visible but it's visible too late. And it doesn't have the global approach that other problems have. mean, it's quite local. Water, and that's something I discovered working here. is heavy. You don't transport water just for fun.

Lars Rinnan (14:36.998)
Hmm.

Lars Rinnan (14:44.103)
Mmm.

Sebastian (14:50.671)
It's heavy and it's costly to move it. So what you normally have, it's a local solution. And that's something that breaks the problem into hundreds of smaller problems, but very acute ones. And then the neighbors that have their water source or salt.

They don't care about what's going on in like few kilometers down or few kilometers up. So it doesn't become a global problem, but it's a really acute local problem.

Lars Rinnan (15:21.435)
Yeah, yeah. I can see that. But of course, there are solutions around and we're going to talk more about Ocean Oasis, of course. So when did you actually realize that moving desalination offshore wasn't crazy but elegant?

Sebastian (15:44.41)
I mean, and that's actually coming from my co-founder Thomas. He's been working on these concepts for many years in his previous jobs as a side project, and he's been developing that. And when he presented the solution, the technology...

First, I thought, a cool solution, but I didn't realize how relevant was it. And then I took it home and I said, OK, let's give it a try and think about it. Why is that relevant? And then I realized that water is about energy. And then the combination between energy and wave power, sorry, water and wave power, made a lot of sense. Water has to be taken from the ocean. You're already in that environment.

and you have waves. And all my waves are treated as a problem because desalination plants don't like really the exposure to waves. So everyone is talking of the problem of waves in the desalination market. And we said, OK, we have a solution that actually uses that energy. Then also realizing the density of wave energy. It's incredible how much energy a wave per kilometer or per meter has in itself. And it's multiplying by 10 or 20 is the energy.

Lars Rinnan (16:52.944)
Mm.

Sebastian (16:57.937)
in solar and wind. And that makes solutions a bit smaller in terms of size or in terms of land, especially compared to solar. mean, every use, every buoy we produce would require a solar, a football court of solar panels. yeah, so it suddenly becomes, I mean, it makes things...

Lars Rinnan (17:14.471)
football court?

Sebastian (17:20.245)
manageable in terms of space and moving to the ocean it makes a lot of sense because as I was talking before land is becoming more and more a problem for desalination and land is becoming more and more a problem for renewable energy sources.

Lars Rinnan (17:32.164)
Mm. Mm.

Sebastian (17:37.569)
So look into the ocean, I think that's the place where the solution is lying. And the combination, was just natural. We're just doing both things at the same time. And that comes with another benefit. We don't have to move that much water. Because in a traditional desalination, you take all the salty water from one or two kilometers into the ocean to shore. Then you desalinate, and then you need to push half of that water.

Lars Rinnan (17:47.611)
Yeah.

Sebastian (18:06.593)
again, out for a few kilometers. Instead of doing that, we just desalinate on the buoy and then we take only the fresh water to shore. So it's less water being pumped, way more efficient system. And then the next stage was, okay, can we do this without producing electricity as our main process? Because producing electricity comes with some limitations and challenges.

Lars Rinnan (18:07.801)
Mm. Mm.

Lars Rinnan (18:26.972)
Yeah.

Sebastian (18:34.543)
And the water process and the desalination only requires pressure. So it can be done by a mechanical system. And that's what we found out. We can do it the whole process mechanically, and we run the whole system with just the movement from the waves. And that becomes quite elegant.

Lars Rinnan (18:43.057)
Hmm.

Lars Rinnan (18:52.965)
Yeah. So how big a shift would you say this is when you actually remove fossil energy from water production entirely?

Sebastian (19:01.167)
I think it's a key part for desalination to become one of the main solutions in close to shore and one of the main solutions for low water scarcity. It really changes the paradigm where we were using a lot of diesel before. We were creating more climate change while we were solving or facing the challenges from what we are seeing. So this really changes the paradigm and decoupling from

CO2 emissions, water production, it's one of the key parts of the solution.

Lars Rinnan (19:36.249)
Yeah. So if we dive a little bit deeper into your technology, because you aren't building these mega plants, you're building movable modular systems. So why is flexibility a strategic advantage in this chaotic climate future?

Sebastian (19:55.471)
So as we were talking, you cannot wait 10 years to build a new plant. And that's a key part. So we need to have a solution that can be deployed within one, two years, whereas the time when you realize you started to have a problem with water. So that was the first solution.

The second part is that it's not only flexible, but it's distributed. We don't want to build a huge plant because sometimes the size of that plant doesn't fit the demand of the region. And there's a lot of regions that are starting to need water and that are not mega cities facing mega plants with desalination And those are just underserved because they don't have the size or they're paying a lot of water because the salinations at that size are quite expensive. So what we can do is deliver water close to the area.

and in a flexible way. So we start with a few units connected to the area and as demand grows because of the population concentration or because of climate change or because of any industrial activity, we can add units to the fleet as we call it and we are increasing volumes and those increased capacity processes will take really few months.

Lars Rinnan (21:07.271)
And how can you let's say, combine all these modular units to become, let's say, big enough so that you can actually serve a big city like Dubai or like Johannesburg or whatever? How do you do that?

Sebastian (21:26.52)
We're taking a step-wise approach here. And I think for us, it's important that we connect with existing design or infrastructure on land. So we're not the sole supplier of water at the beginning. There is already infrastructure on land. And what we're doing is we're increasing their capacity. That allows us to start deploying in an area. And we are starting to kind of increase their volumes slowly without having any additional impact.

until we are big enough that we can deliver more water and avoid increased capacity on land. And that's the way we've been deploying so far with the companies we're working with. That's the way we are envisioning the first step of our deployment. Then we'll be starting to put more units together.

and delivering to land infrastructure that might not have a desalination itself, but it has some capacity of either storage or just taking the water to the population because we're not doing online infrastructure to deliver that water.

Lars Rinnan (22:33.063)
And you said that it could take 10 years to build a traditional plant. And how long would it take you to build the same capacity as one of these football field sized plants?

Sebastian (22:50.062)
Yeah. So, in order to build one unit, and one unit can deliver between 1,000 cubics and 3,000 cubics per day, depending on the wave environment. Just for reference, 2,000 cubics will deliver water for 15,000 people. Just about 15,000. Small reference on that side. So, when we look at that,

Lars Rinnan (23:11.335)
15.

Sebastian (23:19.15)
On the construction, we're talking about building between 5 and 10 units for each location. And what we can do, we're building in line. mean, the structure itself, it's quite simple, and that's normally handled by a yard. They can build all of them. And we are building the containerized equipment that is basically all the desalination part combined with our power takeoff and our

system that manages all the pressure and turns it into pressure that can be used by the desalination system that goes all in the container. So what we are streamlining is that construction that will allow us to deploy in a matter of months per unit and then it connecting to the location. So in a few months basically we can actually have a desalination plant connected and increasing volumes.

Lars Rinnan (24:11.175)
Wow, so we're talking going from 10 years to a couple of months.

Sebastian (24:15.865)
For the next unit, for the first connection, take probably, I would say around a year, year and a half with all the permitting. And then from that, we're talking a few months to increase volumes, to increase capacity by connecting more units.

Lars Rinnan (24:29.883)
Yeah, that's still a big shift that's very amazing. So what about geography? Where does this make the most sense compared to, let's say, solar or land-based plants?

Sebastian (24:44.975)
So what we see is that the wave environment defines our sweet spots, the places where we produce on the 3000 side of per cubic per unit, sorry. That's where our sweet spot are, it's a long beautiful waves that are stable throughout the year. We see in that Chile, South Africa and Namibia, Australia, all kind of all the southern bar.

it has that kind of condition and that delivers beautiful production, very, very good volumes that allows us to lower the cost and to allow us to also have a really steady production throughout the year. But that doesn't stop there. I mean, that's kind of the optimal for us, but we see a lot of other regions that have good enough waves and deliver good capacity, such as the Canary Islands, where we are starting, Morocco, Cape Verde.

Oman.

California and Mexico. And also the Mediterranean is quite interesting because if we manage to get small enough buoys that produce good volumes, and that's kind of the next stage we're looking into, we'll be able to go into the Mediterranean where demand is incredible and the solution is quite needed. But for now we're focusing on the areas where the volumes produced are huge and make the

the whole solution kind of more efficient.

Lars Rinnan (26:12.903)
When you talk about wave quality, what does that really mean? mean, is that some height of the waves or do they need to be high? Do they need to be low? What does it really mean?

Sebastian (26:27.863)
It's a combination. For us, the main criteria is the average one, of the average size, and then how many times we expect the worst wave to be. So if the waves are stable throughout the year,

And then in a storm, has a double size of that wave. It's not a problem because we will design not only for the average wave where we will be producing, but also for the worst scenario where waves would be too big. So what we do is we build for both, make sure that we can survive in any wave situation, but our production, it's the average. So in places where that difference is too big,

We have a challenge. need to build units too big to make sure that we can survive the waves and then the production will be a bit lower. So we are investing more in the construction than we should. The ones that are nice are the...

those places where the difference is not too big, such as, as I was saying, Chile or South Africa, where it's big, but they're big throughout the whole year. So when it comes to big storm, it's not like 10 times bigger, it's just two, three times bigger. Or even five. But it's still within a range where we can actually operate and where we optimize for the construction and allows us to deliver water without facing bigger challenges.

Lars Rinnan (27:52.869)
Yeah. So that means that you have been studying a lot of, let's say wave charts and wind charts and all of that to find the optimal places.

Sebastian (28:00.1)
Yeah. I mean that.

That expertise relies on the rest of the team. have both Thomas and the colleagues, are a good, good, well, impressive background on exactly that. We have a global map of wave environments with data from many years. We can actually in any spot calculate quite accurately what would be the production, not tomorrow, but the average production next month. It's something we can calculate quite accurately and throughout the years.

And that's actually pretty convenient for calculating our production and the cost and all the expected volumes.

Lars Rinnan (28:41.863)
Does climate change affect those kind of wave charts? mean, more, let's say more windy, more rainy climates, does that affect the wind charts? Are they actually changing?

Sebastian (28:56.727)
We've been discussing that there is some changes. We haven't seen that many, I think, yet, but that's something that will happen. And we're following that to basically know if we'll have more and more changing weather. But overall, it's quite good. We have quite good models to assess and to evaluate that. And we'll be following because there is a chance that it will affect the waves.

Lars Rinnan (29:25.383)
Yeah, really cool. So I know that your solution, you know, directly or indirectly supports several of the United Nations sustainable development goals. That could be an interesting part to talk a little bit about. You said that you actually impact five SDGs. I mean, SDG six, clean water, seven, clean energy, 13 climate action, 14 life below water.

nine, industry and innovation. So explain to us, Sebastian, how your technology actually contributes to each one of these and in simple terms so that we all can understand it.

Sebastian (30:07.257)
mean, the first one, I think it's the most straightforward. We produce fresh water, and that's the main goal. So making more fresh water available at a competitive cost, making accessible for everyone, it's our key objective. So that's what we do. The second is energy. as I said, I realized that water was about energy, and solving one is solving the other. So that's why we do it.

And by using waves, we reduce the energy consumed by the grid. And I think the grid will probably discuss more on itself, but I think it's important because in order to make more renewal going to the grid, sometimes what you need to do to take out demand from the grid. And this is what we do. We reduce the demand from the grid from a really energy consuming technology. And that allows more electricity to be renewable while we solve it without electricity. And that's our contribution to energy.

We're basically making the solution 100 % renewable without using electricity and without relying on the grid. The next ones are interesting. think it's...

life under water and that has to be with the brine. We manage the brine in a different way. Basically, we are floating in open waters and that allows us to dilute and disperse the water, the very salt water, the brine without any challenge. We have modeled that and we see that there's no increased salinity around the buoys and that helps also because whenever there's waves, we produce more and that correlation makes the solution even better because the brine will dilute

it's even faster.

Lars Rinnan (31:48.399)
Yeah, exactly. So is that because you're so far out from shore?

Sebastian (31:53.026)
It's a combination. We are out from shore, but also we are floating. So we're not in the sea base and the salty water goes down. So as it goes down, it disperses. If you release it in the bottom, you have a problem because it stays there. So you don't want to be dissonant in the sea base. Do you want to have it up there?

Lars Rinnan (31:58.087)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Right.

Lars Rinnan (32:12.017)
Hmm, interesting. And the last one, well, it's probably self-explanatory. SDG 9, industry and innovation. This is fairly innovative.

Sebastian (32:20.121)
So that's the other part. And then we're collaborating with an industry that has

I think that's a lot of innovation on some parts because desalination especially on the membrane side and the filtering and so on, it's been developing a lot. But on the other sides, the market has not developed that much. So we're helping to innovate a lot on the desalination market, on the water market, which where there's not had been that much innovation in the past.

Lars Rinnan (32:32.103)
Mm.

Lars Rinnan (32:50.599)
Yeah. So where is Ocean Oasis then headed next? What kind of milestones are you hoping to hit in the coming years in terms of deployment numbers or markets or partnerships? Will we see Ocean Oasis everywhere where there's good enough waves?

Sebastian (33:10.143)
That's the main plan. So we're deploying our first fleet here in the Canaries in the north of Gran Canaria. We're starting next year. We'll have our first fleet operational and we'll be able to show it and show the solution works and not only works, it works pretty well and solve the main problems we're talking about. Then...

we are looking into global markets. mean, Chile is growing like crazy. There's a need of desalination in Chile for main industrial activities, which is a bit different, but also some communities that are lacking water. They're looking into desalination. The Canary Islands is also, as our base case, growing. We see that they need to double their capacity by 2030, and that's where we are acting fast.

We have identified five locations where we will be deploying new fleets. We're working with the local communities there, with local governments to identify the right areas, the conditions and the needs. And so we are planning to deploy there.

And then, as I said, international expansion is also coming. And it's coming faster because we see that the money is pulling. It's not our intention to go global everywhere in a couple of years. But we see that some opportunities are just calling. And it's a big need. And it's a great opportunity to showcase in the area, as I was saying, with beautiful wave environments.

Lars Rinnan (34:35.569)
Yeah, I mean, it's a really innovative solution to a huge problem, probably growing quite rapidly as well. But it must also be quite capital intensive. I mean, you're building infrastructure which usually requires quite a lot of investments. How do see investors reacting to your pitch?

Sebastian (35:00.687)
So we simplified the construction to streamline, and I think that's the main focus that we have. So that CapEx is going lower and lower, but still it's an infrastructure construction. I mean, it's not a software, it's not SaaS. So some investors are basically not fit for us. I think that's a big learning.

But some investors also realized that impacts and then climate change and solving these problems required actual investments. And that's the kind of investors we are getting on. Most of them are more family offices, corporate ventures, some venture capital that looks into these problems with a bigger, or longer perspective. It's normally the problem with their time framework that limits the investment. It's not about CapEx. I mean, you can see the amount of CapEx being invested now

in data centers, suddenly it's not a problem. So it's really about the time framework and how fast you can get your numbers up there, or if the founding source doesn't look into kind of limited numbers of years. And the business case is quite clear, so it really works well. It's just a matter of, okay, let's build and deploy, and then the numbers make sense.

Lars Rinnan (35:53.841)
Thanks

Sebastian (36:17.781)
So it's just finding investors that are aligned with that. They understand that it's building infrastructure. And then the big infrastructure funds are quite eager to invest in the next stages where we are deploying several fleets at the same time. And I think that's the main part. It's business that combines depth and...

Lars Rinnan (36:35.495)
Mm.

Sebastian (36:42.219)
and capital from kind of a more infrastructure approach. And that's the way we solve it in the long term. Once we are deploying, we have long-term contracts for Water. And that allows us to have a predictable cashflow. And that predictable cashflow allows us to build exactly the same as other renewal resources. We build on project finance. We deliver...

water every year, we get paid every year, so project finance is perfect for that fit. Then, suddenly, most of the capex is financed by debt, and then the venture capital is used to grow the team, grow the company, and make sure that we grow and we expand at the good path. But the projects are financed by debt and working capital from other projects.

Lars Rinnan (37:31.367)
And if you compare it to, let's say, ordinary desalination plants, if it takes like 10 years to build, then you can build one in a year, a year and a half, and then expand in a couple of months. I mean, that must be a lot more attractive to investors, I guess.

Sebastian (37:48.847)
It really changes the design framework compared to the traditional desalination plans.

Lars Rinnan (37:55.207)
Yeah, okay. That's very good. That's very good. So, you know, this podcast is of course called, you know, The World in 2029. So we're looking forward into the future into, well, it's four years till the end of 2029. So I would love to hear your thoughts on how, let's say, how the desalination situation globally will look at that point. There's probably...

Both positive and maybe not so positive outlooks in that respect. mean, how many people could have reliable drinking water by 2029 that doesn't have that today? Thanks to offer solutions like yours.

Sebastian (38:26.467)
Yeah.

Sebastian (38:43.076)
Yeah, so I think the global perspective is that people are realizing and understanding more and more the need of desalination. And that's reflecting on the path of growth of desalination plants globally. And in countries that have not been doing desalination before, land Portugal, is doing their first big desalination plant. Yeah, many countries are looking into that solution. And that's, think, for us, is the main...

Yeah, the main part of the market is that this is growing, this is growing fast and it will be growing faster. And as we were saying before, they will...

hope they build faster because it will take long time to actually solve the problem from where they come. And that's where we are. mean, solving that gap, I think for us, it's a sweet spot because we are in that moment where people realize they need more water and they realize they need it now. So that's growing a lot. We see that we will be deploying units. The goal is to...

to have deployed in the Canaries, as I said, more than six fleets and internationally a couple by 2030. Each fleet is around 10 units. I'm just doing the numbers with you. So we're talking around 60 units in the Canaries and another 20, let's say. We're talking several volumes. mean, the volumes here are immense.

the population that are looking into saving here. want to make basically getting water to It's quite big. I think globally we'll see a world that will start to rely on our solution to have more water available. see our goal would be to have at least 200,000 people.

getting fresh water from us. But on top of that, there's a lot of industries that will start getting water from us. And I think that's also important. It's not only water for people, which is the main one, but the amount of water that goes into agriculture and industry, it's so big. And that's still, it's a basic need because it's the water that has been used to grow our food or to prepare our...

our other activities, just to support our other activities. So it has to be delivered. So we see that's going to be the case in many places. We're aiming to deploy, as we were talking in the Canaries, but also globally. And by 2030, we should have at least six fleets operating here in the Canaries and a few operating in other countries, such as Chile, as I mentioned before.

Lars Rinnan (42:03.185)
Yeah, that sounds very positive. I think you mentioned earlier when we talked that you could actually see the oceans as our allies. So what does it mean philosophically when water scarcity is solved by the ocean itself?

Sebastian (42:24.57)
So mean, water scarcity is in itself an interesting paradigm because the water is there. The salt that disappeared just went back to the ocean. So it's in the ocean. The oceans are growing. They're coming up. So that means that we just had the water in the wrong location and mixed with salts.

Lars Rinnan (42:34.279)
Mm.

Sebastian (42:44.258)
So what we're doing is just reverting that process. We got too much water into the ocean, in a way. And we're taking just a bit of that and putting it back to land. And it will go back eventually to the ocean again. So it just makes sense. just using the normal cycle of water, but in a different way.

Lars Rinnan (43:02.919)
Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way to look at it. It's actually like a circular thing. That's really good.

Sebastian (43:11.738)
For me it's like, wait.

At least I remember when I was in school, the whole cycle that it goes to the sky and the rain and the rain goes down. We're basically replicating that. And the only difference is that that process uses the energy from basically from the sun to evaporate. It's quite an efficient process. You evaporate all the water, then you have water in clouds, and then the clouds choose where to drop the water. We do it really accurate in one location, and we use the energy from the

waves, which has more density, and we do it in an efficient way to deliver that water to the location.

Lars Rinnan (43:52.039)
Yeah. Yeah. So you're really working with nature instead of against nature and, know, building large plants that take a lot of energy and electricity. Yeah. So that's, oh, I think that's very, very good. So do you think offshore desalination is going to be seen as, let's say normal, as normal as offshore wind by 2029?

Sebastian (44:15.632)
I think so. I think that's coming and it will be taken from the areas that have that combination of water demand and energy scarcity as a great solution. Lots of places are seeing that the energy sources such as solar and wind are limited, are beautiful, have their limitations, especially because of land. And they're looking into the ocean.

in areas where you can connect to offshore wind because of the sea-based and the other conditions, there will be offshore wind deploying and that's been the case, especially in the Nordics.

Globally, there's a lot of areas that's not the only solution, but floating desalination or floating wave power. It's a beautiful combination for the energy grid and for the water supply and everything together. Basically, we see that as an integrated solution. Thinking on energy and water as only one thing, we see that there is a need for more sources. And that's another source that matches beautifully with the water side.

it.

Lars Rinnan (45:21.243)
Yeah. And if you, if you have to sum up your 2029 vision in just one line, something people could share on social media, what would that be?

Sebastian (45:33.189)
Yeah, for me, it's making water available globally in a sustainable way using waves. That will be the key parts. mean, that the global solution of wave power desalination will be available and ready to be used in the areas that water is scarce.

Lars Rinnan (46:02.663)
Yeah. Well, that's, I think that's a really good and positive way to, to finish off this. no, I'm, you, you are addressing a really, really important issue, Sebastian, and something that I think a lot of people are growing number of people actually are fearing, you know, to see that, newspapers are talking about day zero and, and then they start thinking, you know,

how important is actually drinking water to us. We take it for granted, but when people start talking about, might be approaching day zero, you get really, really scared. And this is what you read in the newspapers, but they don't read too much about the fantastic solutions like Ocean Oasis is actually providing. This should actually be the headline in the newspapers. I can't understand why it isn't.

because people think that the world is going to hell, but it's actually improving. There's a lot of really smart, innovative solutions coming on like yours using nature, working together with nature in a circular fashion. So I think that's really, really good. And thank you so much for joining me and spreading both your knowledge and your hope.

Sebastian (47:01.892)
What?

Lars Rinnan (47:24.901)
I hope this really gives people who might have heard about Day Zero in their region, I hope this gives them some hope back that this can actually be solved in a very nice way, climate friendly way. And yeah, the biggest climate solution doesn't require new physics, it just requires new courage and new thoughts, new innovation.

And that's where you're coming. I think that's fantastic. So thank you very much for that, Sebastian. That was amazing.

Sebastian (48:01.914)
Thank you Lars and it's great that you have this window to talk about the positive future and how technology can help us solving the main problems that we are facing. We're facing, as you said, big problems but the solutions are there and the technology is already ready and deploying and we're eager to start showing the world that's a way to produce water in a different way it's possible and we'll solve a lot of the challenges we're facing.

a lot of challenges that people haven't realized yet that they're facing. So we are doing that. I'm very, very glad that you invited us to share that with you and with everyone. And I'm very happy to keep sharing our journey and keeping producing fresh water to everyone.

Lars Rinnan (48:50.503)
Yeah, it was a pleasure having you on Sebastian. And to everyone listening, if you want to continue exploring how technology is quietly solving the world's biggest challenges, subscribe, share the episode and follow the world in 2029. And remember, the future is better than you think. Thank you.