Our atmosphere is hot and getting hotter, drying up lakes, melting glaciers, and radically altering precipitation cycles. As more of the freshwater we depend on evaporates, melts away, or empties into the sea in torrents, the need for desalination—transforming seawater into freshwater through chemical and mechanical processes—will only increase.
According to Bank of America research, water scarcity is a globally escalating issue, with 57% of underground aquifers already depleted past critical tipping points and freshwater demand outstripping supply by 1.7x. (To find out how regenerative farming can help recharge aquifers, read my story about Gabe Brown, featured in the movie Kiss the Ground.)
While demand for desalination systems soars, conventional facilities pack a double whammy for the environment, generating high carbon footprints and serving as chemical wrecking balls for coastal ecosystems.
Flocean, a Norwegian firm, and its domestic competitor, Waterise, are pairing clever engineering and the vast power of nature to turn seawater into fresh with much lower ecological impacts.
Conventional desalination is costly and ecologically harmful
Conventional desalination plants pump coastal seawater onshore using energy from coal- or natural gas-fired facilities. The seawater is not just salty but also teeming with coastal flora and fauna that must be killed using harsh chemicals. After the critters are killed, a tremendous amount of energy is used to force the soup of salt, chemicals, and dead organisms through “reverse osmosis” membranes that filter out all of the gunk to create freshwater. The toxic gunk is then returned—harsh chemicals and all—to coastal waters.
The conventional desalination process generates 2.3 kg of CO2 per cubic meter of freshwater produced, so a plant producing 7,000 cubic meters of freshwater per day has an annual carbon footprint of 6,000 metric tons—about the same as 600 American homes.
Right now, only about 1% of the world’s water supply comes from desalination plants, but as glaciers melt, precipitation patterns change, a lot more freshwater—for both agriculture and human use—will be needed.
The world is in a bind: if we supply more desperately needed freshwater through desalination, we end up pumping more heat-trapping CO2 into the atmosphere and polluting our oceans.
One Norwegian start-up that draws from its parent company’s 150 years of seafaring experience believes it has the perfect solution to free the world from this bind. Flocean is an eleven-year-old spinout from Fuglesangs AS, a company instrumental in making Norway a deep-sea oil-producing powerhouse.
Flocean’s deepwater desalination drives efficiencies and reduces ecological harm
Flocean has engineered a desalination process that outperforms traditional methods in both cost and environmental impact, adapting technology initially developed for deep-sea oil and gas mining by FSubsea, Fuglesangs’ deepwater pump-manufacturing division. Flocean’s subsea solution elegantly avoids the problems of conventional desalination by moving the entire operation underwater. At depths of 300-600 meters, the sweet spot for Flocean facilities, the ambient water pressure is so great that seawater can be forced through reverse osmosis membranes without supplemental energy. Energy to pump freshwater to shore through long subsea pipes can be supplied by renewable sources, resulting in a process with about half the energy intensity of conventional desalination.
Flocean units draw water from a twilight world nearly devoid of biological activity, so the water doesn’t require chemical pre-treatment. This lowers operating costs, eliminates toxic outflows to coastal waters, and delivers fresh water with a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional systems.
Flocean’s economic model for desalination has been attracting smart money investors—with good reason
Flocean holds the intellectual property for the subsea desalination plants and licenses it out to standalone entities managing each desalination project. Each project is backed by local debt and equity investors, which are in turn secured by long-term municipal water supply contracts. Flocean not only earns licensing fees from each of its projects, but also sells the project entity necessary equipment and provides engineering services. After each project’s debt is paid off, Flocean receives a clean and fresh stream of cash flows from the project’s water contracts.
Alexander Fuglesang, Flocean’s CEO and the fifth-generation scion of the Fuglesangs’ business empire, says that with global water demand projected to surge 25% by 2050, the desalination market presents a compelling opportunity. He expects the market size to increase from $15.2 billion in 2022 to $33.38 billion by 2030 (a 10.5% annualized growth rate), led by surging demand in the Middle East and Africa, particularly Saudi Arabia.
Flocean recently closed a Series A investment round, totaling $9 million (100 million NOK) and led by Burnt Island Ventures, Nysnø Climate Investments and Freebird Partners. According to the company’s press release, other participants in the round included Katapult Ocean, MP Pensjon, and former Bridgewater Associates executives investing through a Donor Advised Fund structure.
Flocean is strategically positioned to capture this expanding market by offering what water-stressed regions need most: a desalination solution that dramatically reduces energy costs and environmental impacts. Intelligent investors take note.
