What is the name of your organization?
Ocean Oasis
What is the name of your solution?
Ocean Oasis
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Wave-powered desalination delivering fresh water to coastal communities with zero emissions and no reliance on external energy sources.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Oslo, Noruega
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
NOR
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
We are addressing the challenge of water scarcity in coastal and island communities highly vulnerable to climate change and increasingly dependent on desalination. Globally, over 2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water (UNICEF, UN-Water), and demand is rising as rising temperatures, droughts, and salinization accelerate freshwater depletion. While desalination is a critical solution, traditional approaches face major barriers to scale.
Today’s desalination is centralized, energy-intensive, and often fossil-fuel powered—producing over 95 million m³/day globally with high carbon and operational costs. In island and off-grid regions, this dependency is especially problematic: electricity is often generated from imported diesel, making desalination expensive, polluting, and vulnerable to energy supply disruptions. In the Canary Islands, over 80% of drinking water comes from desalination, but more than 20% of total electricity consumption is used to power these plants.
Expansion is further constrained by land availability—for both desalination facilities and associated energy infrastructure—as well as the environmental risks of brine discharge when not properly managed. Long permitting and construction timelines for onshore plants also delay the impact. Without a more decentralized, sustainable model, traditional desalination cannot meet the growing water needs of vulnerable regions facing the frontlines of climate change.
What is your solution?
Ocean Oasis has developed a floating desalination device that turns seawater into clean drinking water using only wave energy—no fuel, no grid, no land use, and zero emissions.
Our system operates entirely offshore. It captures the natural up-and-down motion of ocean waves and converts that mechanical energy into pressure, which is used to run seawater through a membrane in a process called reverse osmosis. This removes salt and impurities to produce fresh water.
Unlike traditional desalination plants, our device requires no external electricity, no land use, and minimal maintenance. It is designed to operate autonomously, with remote monitoring and real-time control. The fresh water can be delivered to shore via a pipeline with no additional energy consumption.
We have successfully tested our first industrial prototype in the Canary Islands and are now scaling up to deploy the first fleet of buoys to deliver industrial volume production to an existing desalination plant. Ocean Oasis makes desalination clean, accessible, and viable even for small or remote communities that cannot afford conventional infrastructure.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Ocean Oasis serves water-stressed coastal communities where rising demand, limited freshwater sources, and climate change are straining existing supply systems. Our initial deployment is in the Canary Islands, where we integrate with existing desalination and distribution infrastructure to top up water production capacity—ensuring continuity of service as demand grows and resources become scarcer.
Globally, we target small island developing states, arid coastal regions, and remote communities facing similar pressures. These populations are often underserved by centralized water systems and exposed to rising costs, unreliable supply, and climate-driven disruptions. Many depend on diesel-based desalination or long-distance water transport—both carbon-intensive and vulnerable to shocks.
By delivering clean, wave-powered water offshore and connecting it directly to land-based infrastructure, Ocean Oasis offers a scalable, low-emission solution that boosts system resilience and helps utilities or municipalities meet increasing demand. This supports public health, economic activity, and climate adaptation, especially in regions with limited land, energy, or capital for new desalination capacity.