Wave energy power plant will be 'one of world's first' to use fossil free steel

Wave energy remains one of the largest untapped sources of clean energy available, says CorPower Ocean

Image of a planned CorPower Ocean wave farm off the coast of Portugal
Image of a planned CorPower Ocean wave farm off the coast of PortugalFoto: CorPower Ocean

Swedish marine energy specialist CorPower Ocean has inked a deal that will see it develop what it claims will be one of the world’s first wave energy power plants made using fossil-free steel.

CorPower announced today (Tuesday) that it will use fossil-free steel delivered by Swedish steelmaker SSAB to “build a wave energy system with significantly lower carbon emissions than what is currently on the market.”

CorPower makes products that harness ocean waves to generate clean energy, and last year deployed its first commercial scale device off the coast of northern Portugal.

Around a quarter of its products’ lifetime carbon dioxide emissions come from the use of steel as a material, said CorPower.

“One of our core company mantras is to deliver the most environmentally friendly electricity on our planet,” said Anders Jansson, head of business development at CorPower.

“With our work with SSAB and fossil-free steel, we aim to lead the way within the renewable sector by transparent reporting and continuous reduction of lifecycle emissions.”

Thomas Hörnfeldt, vice president of sustainable business at SSAB, said that his company is “hugely excited for the next chapter” of an already decade-long partnership with CorPower, delivering fossil-free steel to ensure the Swedish company’s products are delivered with the “lowest carbon footprint possible.”

CorPower claims that, partly due to the quality of SSAB steel, its technology “already delivers more than five times as much electricity per tonne of equipment compared with previous state-of-the-art wave energy systems.”

“One of the largest untapped sources of clean energy available,” CorPower said that wave energy “has 500GW of harnessable potential – more than the total global nuclear resource in the world today.”

SSAB plans to deliver fossil-free steel to market at commercial scale in 2026 and largely decarbonise its own operations around 2030.

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Published 24 October 2023, 09:39Updated 24 October 2023, 09:39
CorPower OceanSSABSwedenPortugalEurope