Our Investment Premise

MARE is first and foremost about a simple business model: 

It is a Utility Company.

It's goal is to bring clean, CO2 free, renewable and inexpensive electricity to Europe and, under some circumstances to be defined, to West Africa. 

This electricity will be produced by means of  "Very Large Scale" renewable generators, like Solar Thermal Concentrators,  very fast growing Algae Biomass  and  and some additional integrated technologies (to lower costs while pushing efficiency).

The originality and uniqueness of the project consists of it's location and  specific integration.

The MARE project is a very bold vision, but it's concept uses readily available, scalable technologies. MARE can show real world examples with real world data to demonstrate how we are going to go about that. (see below and our  Q & A)

The projet is on a dimension comparable to very big hydro- electrically projects like "Grand Inga" in Africa, "Three Gorges Dam" in China or  "Itaipu" in South America or the Hoover Dam in the US, while building on the entrepreneurial spirit of projects like the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal or the Channel Tunnel or any other big human projects as the ISS space station, the CERN super  accelerator, the basis tunnel under the ALPS, or some of the biggest bridges on the 5 continents. It's a challenging, but very realistic engineering task.

MARE's general contractor is Offshore Renewables

To illustrate the tremendous potential lets talk  oil barrels  (see current oil price here)

Imagine: 4 billion barrels of oil every year: … this is the equivalent energy that will be available on our energy platform …year after year, forever…

“Extractable” energy: about 20%, with today’s proven technology. Production price: less than 20 $ per barrel…and available year after year.

“Extractable” with soon to be available technology: up to 50% . Estimated production price in the future: less than 10 $ per barrel … available: forever… year after year…

Oil (equivalent energy) at less than 20$ per barrel:this is the promise of our project.

Energy immediately available as electricity. Negligible transport costs. No more pollution, no more spills, no more drills. Available 24 hours a day, for the next thousands of years ..... never ever has a project made more sense...to investors, and our civilization

There is an endless need for clean, renewable energy. The 21^st. century. is rapidly becoming a huge market. This market is driven by the need to produce clean energy to slow down global climate change and replace dwindling fossil fuels. No country will be able to escape this need. Positioning solutions on a large scale to provide the energy the world needs represents a unique investment opportunity.  

Consumer preference for greener energy is growing tremendously due to new awareness regarding environmental degradation and political instability. The time to move from research and test tube to reality is now.

Electric energy power plants produce about half the CO2 emissions in the world (mainly from coal, oil and gas). These energy sources will have to be replaced sooner than later, for the for mentioned reasons i.e. Global warming, environment & health concerns and last but not least, the unfolding energy crisis.

The Schott memorandum (2004), must read for investors

Highly simplified illustration of the principles of the proposed basic technology. ..

The Pre-Feasibility Study

Figures compiled from market prices (2006), based on studies of Trans-CSP, excluding final platform and price reductions for economy of scale CSP's and material. A World Bank study concludes that large scale economies within this technology amounts to at least 50% overall costs.

The assumed feed-in tarif is 0.10 € raising 0.02 € every 5 years

Capacity, Costs & Space:

Possible indicators for the total EU-WA High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) interconnection and Concentrating Solar Thermal plants from 2012 – 2030 according to a similar based TRANS-CSP scenario.

The technologies needed to realize this concept are already fully developed and have been in use for decades.

Solar Thermal Power Plants such as, for example Parabolic Trough Power Plants, have been in use commercially at Kramer Junction in California since 1985. Further solar power plants are actually planned or in construction e.g. in Nevada and Spain, with German, Spanish and US companies playing a major role. Solar Thermal Power Plants can generate electricity at all times day and night throughout the year, using high capacity heat storage.

ABB and Siemens have utilized HVDC transmission lines up to 1.5 GW capacities for many years. If more power is to be transmitted, more than one line can be used. At the World Energy Dialogue 2006 in Hanover, Germany, both companies confirmed that the implementation of a Trans Oceanic energy cooperative is technically not a problem at all.

It has been calculated that, if Solar Thermal Power Plants were to be constructed in large numbers in the coming years, the estimated cost (including transmission cost) will come down from 9-22 EuroCent/kWh to less than 5 EuroCent/kWh.

In order to establish a transmission grid by 2030 a capacity of 100 GW of exportable solar power, the required governmental financial support would be less than 10 billion Euros. Given that level of support for feed-in regulations, the construction of the solar power plants and the necessary transmission grid would be very attractive to investors, both private and public. The total investment needed would be about 4-500 billion Euros over 20 years. An exact investment forecast for the MARE-CSP scenario has yet to be researched.

Imports of fuels such as uranium, natural gas and oil, are considered politically risky since the global reserves are shrinking inexorably and faster than most people know. This is leading to higher prices, political dependencies and limits on supplies. By contrast, solar power is plentiful and inexhaustible and its extended use will lower costs and improve the technologies. Increased demand by Europe would lead to more business opportunities for the WA countries and this in turn may help increase political stability and improve relations between Europe and WA.

Too large a dependence on one country and on only a few power plants can be avoided by the proposed smart platform of renewable energy and by of the use of several different HVDC transmission lines to Europe. Possible worries about security of supply will also be reduced if there are many different owners of the facilities both public and private.

By 2030, some 25-50% of Europe’s electricity may be clean power, half of that imported from the MARE smart platform. International trade in renewable energy will tend to increase the number of available sources and should help to strengthen international stability. The creation of new jobs in the WA region would enhance its internal stability and solve migration problems. Employment would be created in the construction phase, in the maintenance of power plants, transmission and in the generation and distribution of electricity and water for local people.

Of course, there is also the possibility of generating hydrogen through inexpensive and inexhaustible supplies of energy as a possible substitute for fossil fuels for transport. Furthermore, there would be a lower need of biomass to generate electricity, so it could be used largely for food and with some reservations for transport.

The Required General Conditions

As currently seen in Spain, nominal governmental aid will help develop energy projects like MARE. Realizing the concept of MARE will only require guaranteed acceptance of the electricity and water, favourable loans and loan guarantees. A few billion Euros could kick start the investment needed for the production and transmission of solar power. Europe and its partner states would ultimately be able to benefit from cheap, pollution-free and inexhaustible solar power. It would also mean that nuclear power with all its many headaches could be phased out and likewise for traditional fossil power stations.

A way to implement the MARE concept

As a means of implementing the MARE-TEC concept, MARE proposes an initiative that would be as ambitious as the Space station program that took people into orbit and beyond.

While comparable in cost to space exploration, clean energy is about getting our priorities right, as a civilization. With dramatic climate change on the move, the priority is to obtain large quantities of clean, CO2 free energy available to everyone.

For investors, clean energy on an unlimited time/quantity scale means unlimited revenues.