Financing of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Projects

A reader offers this comment on my belief that ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) can represent a cost-effective way to deliver clean energy to the equatorial regions of the world.  He writes:  (OTEC) will require an investor with deep pockets as the initial investment is quite large.

Interestingly enough, that’s not true.

Equity investors (of whom I’m one) in companies like OTECorp own pieces of a company whose market cap is a few tens of millions of dollars.  Yes, the cost of OTEC projects is huge (billions of dollars), but that’s not an issue for investors.  The company has project financing vendors lined up around the block to provide project financing, i.e., long-term financing  based upon the projected cash flows of the project, rather than the balance sheets of its sponsors.