In June 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) launched the Waves to Water Prize to develop wave energy-powered desalination systems to address the growing global need for clean water that is sustainably sourced.
Engineering for Change collaborated with the WPTO and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to support competitors of the Prize. Innovators selected for the “Create” stage were connected to domain experts through E4C’s network based on initial assessment of project needs (e.g., technical support, understanding the market, etc.) Following this successful collaboration and based on expressed need from both the competitors and WPTO team, E4C continued our work with NREL and the US DOE conducting a market assessment of opportunities and barriers for wave-powered desalination technologies and hosted stakeholder workshops on delivering value to customers. E4C continues our work with NREL and the US DOE in 2023 broadening our scope to include assessing the market potential of technologies used to power the Blue Economy.
