Telling the OTEC Story

One of the highlights of my trip back east this week will be a visit to my client OTECorporation, a company with a huge head-start in ocean thermal energy conversion.  “OTEC,” as it’s normally abbreviated, is one of the renewable energy technologies that is essentially a variant of solar; the surface of the oceans in the tropical regions around the globe absorbs and stores vast amounts of heat energy that the Earth receives from the sun – energy that can be converted to mechanical energy (and ultimately electrical energy) through the same concept that lies behind a heat pump: the successive evaporation and condensation of a working fluid.

My job here is essentially creating a market: OTEC is essentially an unknown technology, and my client (though a clear leader in this nascent industry) is a virtually unknown entity within it.  This means, I’m happy to report, a great deal of traditional work needs to be done in terms of packaging and telling the story to the “usual suspects” that form the basic constituencies for any market: investors, journalists, industry analysts, the scientific community, partners, suppliers, and customers.

In this case, because OTEC has huge ramifications in terms of sustainability, there are other audiences as well, including the entire community of people concerned about climate change, ocean acidification, water and food shortages, national security, and the health consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels.  There are over 200,000 groups around the globe that are dedicated to environmental sustainability and social justice – all of which should be aware of the potential impact that OTEC may have on a world so desperate for answers to its energy-related woes.

It’s about establishing OTEC as an industry and OTECorporation as the leader in thought and deed within it.  Time to roll up my sleeves and get to work.