00:00Absolument, merci beaucoup Simon pour cette update sur l'Africatech.
00:05Et maintenant, nous sommes venus à la live sur ce site de Merit Dendez.
00:09Merit, nous allons réviser des solutions des solutions pour la meilleure future
00:14et nous allons profiter dans le climat tech pour cette heure.
00:19Absolument, et je suis heureux d'introduire mon guest ici, Nicolas Euse,
00:24CEO de Switch Energy.
00:26Bienvenue à vous.
00:26Merci beaucoup.
00:27Merci beaucoup.
00:27Before I get to you Nicola, I'm going to turn to you Marjorie for a couple of questions.
00:31Have you heard of solar energy?
00:33Solar energy?
00:34I definitely have.
00:35Have you heard of tidal energy?
00:38Not that much.
00:39Have you heard of osmotic energy?
00:42Never.
00:43Well, to be perfectly honest, either had I before I discovered Switch Energy
00:46and I believe we are not the only people here at VivaTech that don't know much about osmotic energy
00:51and that's why Nicola is here.
00:52To start with, can you explain to us in just a few words, for those that are not scientists,
00:58what exactly is osmotic power or osmotic energy?
01:01All right.
01:02Well, so no shame because obviously many of you don't know osmotic energy today.
01:08Osmotic energy, to put it simply, this is the energy of mixing salt water, sea water and fresh water.
01:15And you can find it in all deltas and estuaries of the world.
01:19And it's a massive source of renewable energy.
01:22It's probably the last renewable energy that we can really use to accelerate the energy transition.
01:29And it has been a grail of renewable energy because it's clean, renewable and it's permanent.
01:35You can use it 24 hours a day.
01:38Which is obviously one of the criticisms of wind or solar.
01:41Yeah, this is one of the limits of wind and solar.
01:45And this one, just like hydro energy, for instance, is permanent.
01:49So this energy, it's been on the radar screen for like 75 years.
01:54Scientists, academics, industrial have been trying to find a way to harness this energy
02:00and produce electricity with it in a competitive manner.
02:04But so far the technology was not there and we changed the game with our technology.
02:08So basically what you're saying is that this technology, this energy has existed forever.
02:12Around 75 years ago we learned how to harness it.
02:15And what you've done is found a way to bring down the costs.
02:18Is that right?
02:19Yeah, actually so the core of the system to use osmotic power is a membrane.
02:24You know, because you need to basically select your ions transferring between fresh water and seawater.
02:31I will keep it simple.
02:32And so the membrane has to have certain specification, particularities.
02:37And so far the membrane available at very low performances.
02:41Plus, they were very expensive.
02:44So low performance, high cost means that it did work, but it was not competitive at all.
02:49And what we've done over the last 10 years at Switch Energy is that we've applied very recent breakthroughs in
02:56nanotechnologies to design a completely new membrane that is selective but can generate much higher current.
03:04Plus, we've worked on materials and we're using biomaterials that are very low cost.
03:09So that at the end of the day we have a membrane that is very high performance and low cost
03:15membrane.
03:15So we broke the ceiling, I would say.
03:18And suddenly, you know, osmotic power becomes a viable option for energy transition.
03:23Can you give us an idea of the scale and the possibilities linked to osmotic power?
03:28Yeah, sure.
03:29At global scale, if you take the main deltas and estuaries of the world, we have about 30,000 TWh
03:37of osmotic energy that is available every year.
03:40Okay.
03:41Just to give you an order of magnitude or comparison point, the electricity demand on Earth every year is about
03:4725,000 TWh, right?
03:49So it's more than our demand right now.
03:51Right.
03:51So we're not going to use all of that.
03:53But we think that eventually in 30, 40 years from now, we could produce up to 15,15% of
04:01electricity needs with osmotic power.
04:04It's huge.
04:05Absolutely.
04:06Do you imagine that this form of renewable energy, I'm going to call it this new form of renewable energy,
04:11even if it's existed for a while, is going to replace some of the existing?
04:16Is it going to push out some of the others or do you think it's going to complement?
04:19Well, we will need a lot of electricity, right?
04:24Probably much more than we think if we want to make the transition.
04:27So I think this technology is going to complement other types of technology.
04:33When you look at forecast today, it is expected that in 30 years from now, we will still produce half
04:39of global electricity with coal and gas.
04:42So we need more sources of renewable energy.
04:44And this one is a great complement to existing ones.
04:47Can you just tell us finally some next steps perhaps, like where are we going from now?
04:52The first production plant will be set up in France?
04:55Yes.
04:56So the objective is to go fast.
04:58And so the first pilot plant with our technology will start in less than a year from now.
05:03It's going to be on the Rhône River Delta in the south of France.
05:07Just to give you again an order of magnitude, on the Rhône River, we could install up to 500 megawatt
05:13power capacity.
05:14This is half a nuclear plant, right?
05:16It can provide electricity for 1.5 million people.
05:19That really does give us an idea of the scale of the technology.
05:24And perhaps if I've got time for one last question.
05:27Climate Tech is obviously a big subject here at Viva Tech.
05:30We know that, you know, investments over 50 billion US per year.
05:34Is it easy to attract money for these kinds of projects?
05:37Well, obviously there is a lot of traction of interest around us.
05:40It's never easy.
05:42It's rare to find any business out.
05:44It's easy, but…
05:45No, but we are probably at the right place at the right time.
05:48And we need to go fast and investors understand that there is big opportunities, yes.
05:53Right place, right time.
05:54Thank you very much, Nicola Uzzet, for joining us here on Viva Tech News.
05:58Perfectly on time.
05:59Thank you so much, Marek.
06:00Thank you so much for this amazing piece of innovation.
06:03And now, Anna Kowalska awaits in the Fireside Chat Studio.
06:08She sits with the moneymaker of Amazon AWS.
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