Seasteading Today

Seasteading Today


Clean, Renewable Energy with Dr. Patrick Takahashi

October 17, 2019

Dr. Patrick Takahashi is a retired engineering professor who has been advocating for the Blue Revolution for a third of a century.  In 1979 he wrote the original legislation for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) when he worked in the U.S. Senate.

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between cooler deep water and warmer surface-level water to run a heat engine to produce useful work, usually in the form of electricity. Fresh water is a byproduct of this process.

Photo source: Blue Revolution Hawaii

You can also bring nutrients that have sunk to the deeper waters closer to the surface where they become pre-fertilizer for a seaweed farm.

Photo source: Blue Revolution Hawaii

This one technology can produce food, energy, fresh water, and hydrogen fuel– everything a floating city in the ocean needs. And OTEC plants will improve the quality of the ocean, and potentially lower the temperature of the water, which prevents hurricanes.

It’s almost like magic.Dr. Patrick Takahashi

Photo by: Øystein Paulsen, Wikimedia

Cultivating food that is lower on the trophic level requires fewer resources and preserves the environment. Dr. Takahashi recommends farming whale sharks because they provide plentiful meat, reproduce quickly, and are lower on the trophic chain than more popular fish like tuna.

Read Ocean Thermal: Energy Conversion 1st Edition by Patrick Takahashi and  Andrew Trenka

Read Dr. Takahashi’s blog, Planet Earth and Humanity.

Watch Patrick Takahashi on Blue Revolution at the Seasteading Conference 2012.

Read The Dawn of the Blue Revolution on Huffington Post.

OTEC International has been working with Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) to develop a 100-megawatt OTEC plant offshore of O‘ahu’s leeward industrial area.

Please subscribe to the Seasteading Today podcast on Apple | Android |