This Accelerator Is Creating New Pathways To Scaling Oceantech

Investment in ocean conservation lags far behind other nature-based climate solutions, but the oceans is far more than a mysterious watery expanse and food source – it’s essential to life on earth.

Funding of ocean conservation represented just 9% of financial flows into nature-based solutions last year.

Here are a couple of reasons why this needs to change: we often hear about forests as the ‘lungs of the earth’, but there’s another type of ‘earth lung’ that lives in the ocean: phytoplankton - its a plant-like organism that lives in the sea and creates 50% of the earth’s oxygen. Like plants, phytoplankton use chlorophyll to capture sunlight and produce oxygen as a by-product while transferring 10 Gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere into the oceans each year.

The oceans cover more than 70% of the earth’s surface and absorb around 25% of the earth’s CO2 emissions. An incredible 90% of the heat from global warming has been absorbed by the oceans: and while this is a valuable buffer against the impact of climate change, it comes at a cost. Increasing CO2 levels in the ocean alters seawater with acidification - which is damaging marine life. A warming ocean also reduces the nutrients available near the ocean surface, causing a loss in phytoplankton.

To tackle the issue of underinvestment in ocean tech and sustainable ocean management, the Blue Action Accelerator has set up a $10 million funding pot to combine investment with vital living lab capabilities and access to jurisdictions in Miami and the Bahamas as part of a network of testing grounds to support the technologies that can bring change to ocean health and marine life. It offers early-stage investment, operating support and a streamlined route to a global network of maritime and coastal test grounds.

“The government of The Bahamas and the City of Miami Dade have shown a commendable commitment to taking meaningful action to mitigate climate change, and so we want to invest in technologies that will help these jurisdictions – and others like them – fulfil their aims, creating local solutions that also have global applications,” says Director of Blue Action Accelerator, Rupert Hayward.

The Blue Action Accelerator has been specifically designed to overcome some of the key barriers to scaling tech including government relations, access to living laboratories where tech can be tested and validated as well as funding and operational expertise. It has a joint venture with Blue Action Ventures and a global company builder, Founders Factory, to create a unique learning laboratory for founders that offers support with public-private partnerships and access to vital resources that help to circumvent red-tape limiting climate tech innovations from scaling and make blue and green technologies viable for the future.

“Climate change is inducing major changes in the physics and chemistry of the global ocean and this will see a rapid decline in ocean health and serious risks to the billion people who live and work in low-lying coastal communities,” says George Northcott, Director of Blue Action Accelerator. “We believe in the power of entrepreneurs to solve the climate crisis and they must have access to policy-makers and government departments to impact change.”