Hear from Göran Fredrikson - Speaker at Green Connections 2019

"Successful people make a habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't want to do"

What awoke your interest to pursue a career working towards creating a more sustainable world? 
​My initial contact with alternative energy and wave power in particular was in the late 1970’s as a result of the oil crises, (at that time it was a question of alternative energy to reduce reliance on expensive oil, renewable energy is a much later term for the same thing) when my father performed the first ever full-scale wave power tests with an OWEC (Offshore Wave Energy Converter) in the sea off the west coast of Sweden.

The interest in wave power fluctuated with the oil prices early on – low oil price no interest, high oil price renewed interest – but at a point around the millennium shift a more long-term understanding of the needs to replace fossil fuel with renewable energy set in. In 2001 I started a wave power company called AquaEnergy with my brother and a couple of partners in Seattle. While that company is no longer in the ocean energy business, it gave me the reason, in 2004, to leave my previous career and focus 100% on wave power development, which resulted in me starting Waves4Power AB in Sweden with some friends in 2012. 

Who has inspired you the most to chose the professional path that you are on?
As I mentioned initially my father early on showed me the route to converting ocean waves to electric power. The decision I made in 2004 to focus 100% on wave power was a business decision as much as an environmental decision but as I age the idea of leaving a tool behind for future generations to improve our planets environment by using the yet unexplored power of ocean waves is now my driving force.

In what way do you believe that GC could have a significant impact in accelerating the shift towards a more sustainable world?
I have already expressed the challenge – money – that new technologies almost always struggle with before reaching a commercial break through. Europe and Scandinavia have the highest number of wave power developers but USA has the best access to funding for new technologies.

By being able to share with participants at the GC where wave power development is today in Scandinavia, I hope to increase the understanding of wave power’s potential in general and create an interest in Waves4Power’s potential in particular.

The meeting will be an interesting opportunity to connect with developers and future partners in North America, because the potential for converting ocean wave motion into electric power is just as good in North Western USA and Canada as it is in northern Europe.

What do you hope to learn from being a speaker at Green Connections 2019?  
I hope to be able to share my view of the ocean as a potential energy source that up till now has been widely under-utilised.

As I share my beliefs of the positive outlook wave power has moving forward, I hope to gather knowledge and understand the objections and doubts about this opportunity that is more prevalent in North America than in my home country of Sweden. Improving on my network to be able to make inroads on the US market is another hope of mine for the GC convention 2019.

Göran Fredrikson, Speaker at GC 2019