Crystal: [00:00:00] I’m Crystal DiMiceli, and welcome to the Forces for Nature show. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you, as just one person, can’t really make a difference? Forces for Nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview someone who is working to make the world more sustainable and humane.

Join me in learning from them and get empowered to take action. So that you too can become a force for nature.

Welcome to another episode of the Forces for Nature EarthX conference series, where I bring you behind the scenes of my experiences during that week and up close and personal with some of the incredible presenters. What if I were to tell you that the solutions to some of our biggest environmental challenges were already out there, just waiting to [00:01:00] be discovered and supported?

I’ve got news for you. They are. And getting those ideas up and running is the mission of Ocean Exchange, a 501c3 private foundation dedicated to accelerating the adoption of innovative solutions for healthy oceans and sustainable ecosystems. In this episode, I speak with Millicent Pitts. The executive director of Ocean Exchange, Millicent is helping to identify and fund groundbreaking technologies that not only protect our waters, but also drive economic growth from startups tackling pollution and biodiversity loss.

to innovations and sustainable shipping and ocean based carbon sequestration. Ocean exchange is bringing these solutions to market. Millicent shares insights on the emerging blue economy, why investors should be paying attention to this industry and the challenges ocean tech innovators face in getting their ideas off the ground.[00:02:00]

Whether you’re an entrepreneur. An investor or someone who just cares about our seas. You’re going to want to join us as we explore how innovation and investment can create a healthier, more resilient future for our oceans.

Hi, Millicent. Thank you so much for joining me on Forces for Nature. It’s so great to have you. Thanks for having me. It’s fun to be in Dallas, Texas. There’s been some incredible panels this week, and yesterday was very much focused on the ocean and the blue economy, so I’d like to get into that a little bit.

But first, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and Ocean Exchange?

Millicent: Yes. So, I came to Ocean Exchange about ten years ago. Before that, I spent 30 years in the chemical and materials industry and some people think that that’s quite a change. It’s not as big a change as you think because we worked on a [00:03:00] lot of topics of resource efficiency and innovation in the chemical industry.

But I made the big leap to come to Ocean Exchange. I’m not one of the founders. I met them right after the founding. We’re about 13 years old. And they had a hypothesis that many solutions exist. They’re out there, they’re buried in universities and research institutions and in some cases sole entrepreneurs that are toiling away and, and they’re all stuck, right, they don’t know how to make the next step to success.

And if we could only help them, shine a bright light on them, find out what they’re working on, what challenges they’re going to solve, that we could have some impact. And I would say over 13 years now we have quite a track record of solutions that have come through our process. We actually give away money, so we exist to help advance the adoption of innovative solutions for healthy oceans, sustainable [00:04:00] and resilient coastal systems.

We don’t separate the water from the near land because they influence each other for good and bad. And more recently in the last four or five years, we talk about a sustainable blue economy. That’s rather new to the conversation, although the underlying topics are not new.

Crystal: Can you explain what a blue economy is, because I’ve been hearing that term a lot.

Millicent: Yeah, so I was lucky to NOAA subcommittee for the blue economy in 2020. There are multiple definitions of the blue economy I’ll use. I’ll rely on my NOAA experience, but the World Bank has their own and I’m sure the UN talks about it in a different way as well. But there are ways that humans can Interact with the ocean, actually use the ocean, without hurting the ocean.

In some cases, use it restoratively, right? Not just degrade the ocean. But in the meantime, create economic activity, create good paying [00:05:00] jobs. So that’s the economy part of it. And there, there are some at NOAA and other places that say the blue economy will grow faster than the economy at large. So, it’s something we should all pay attention to, and as we talk about the so called energy transition, when jobs are going to be displaced, the blue economy can provide good jobs for all strata of society.

It’s not just the PhDs, it’s all, all skill sets.

Crystal: Can you give me an example of something?

Millicent: Of course, shipping. Ocean shipping. Experts say that Wherever we’re sitting, and we’re sitting in a podcast studio right now, anything you can see or touch, where you’re sitting, your office, your home, in your car, 90 percent of it either came on a ship, or a component came on a ship, or the raw materials for it came on a ship.

Yet ports are often hidden from society. We don’t Many of us don’t live near ports, and in fact, people move away [00:06:00] from ports, you know, they move away from these industrial centers to, to other areas. So it’s a, it’s a hidden part of the blue economy, but it impacts us all. During, during the pandemic, you know, we heard about all this supply chain problems, and we saw pictures, let’s say, in the port of L.

A. of The ports of ships all stacked up there. For a while, I think people were very cognisant of the supply chain. Now, we’ve forgotten about it. Things are, are more normal. So shipping is one. Ocean research is one. Oh. As an economic activity. Yes, yes. And often, I was at first surprised when I saw that, I have to admit, but it employs a lot of people.

They’re research ships. That are government owned, university owned, research center owned. They buy a lot of equipment. They consume a lot of services about data analysis. Yeah, it is its own vertical in the blue economy. Tourism is [00:07:00] huge in many places. It’s the largest part of the blue economy. Offshore renewables.

Current oil and gas is also there, of course. Fisheries. A big economic driver, right, the, the fishers themselves, the seafood processing, the all down the retail chain, you know, how we use seafood. So NOAA has about 10 verticals in the blue economy. As I said, there are, there are other, other definitions, but it’s a good one.

The, the hallmark of the modern definition of the blue economy is that it’s abroad and that we can use the ocean as humans responsibly and even restoratively.

Crystal: Oceans Exchange works with different innovations that help the oceans and support that restorative process. What innovations are you seeing here this week that support healthy oceans and a sustainable blue economy?

Millicent: Well, we invited four Startups to come and present on the ocean stage [00:08:00] yesterday to actually pitch for 20, 000. The 20, 000 was provided by the Tremel Crow family and Bowdye Capital. So I’ll tell you a little bit about these four and they illustrate some elements of the blue economy. One was water warriors.

They’re from Kentucky, not, not near the ocean. Yeah, good point. But they have a solution to take phosphorus up out of. water runoff out of agricultural areas, and this runoff, this nutrient runoff can cause algae blooms. And the presenter there showed a very impactful map of the United States and the big dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and all the different.

rivers and tributaries running down into the Mississippi, into the Gulf of Mexico. So they have a solution to stop that phosphorus runoff, which is really quite a terrible problem. And then he showed another map of, uh, hot spots all over the world. [00:09:00] So it’s not just a U. S. problem. Another one is Cordelia Biosciences.

They are students at University of Florida, PhD students. And they are using biotech to create a sustainable chemical portfolio using microbes from reefs. And their first target are natural cosmetics. But they can go into a lot of other markets. Uh, and they’re so impressive. We gave them 10, 000 last year in our student award.

Another one, another Ph. D. student at University of Florida is the Ocean Rescue Alliance and they are doing marine conservation and restoration, artificial reefs, planting coral, and so forth. The founder there told me she’s going to defend her Ph. D. in May and then she will, she will be off to the races as an entrepreneur.

We gave Ocean Rescue Alliance 10, 000 a couple of years ago. And the fourth one was Silent Returns, [00:10:00] and they are using robotic equipment, ocean going robotic equipment, to help get data about biodiversity and remote habitats. Biodiversity is one of the hot, hot, hot, hot topics in ocean science. Why is that?

If one wants to do offshore wind, for example, one has to do a baseline of the, the marine life there that has to be monitored to make sure that the sighting of offshore wind doesn’t disrupt marine habitats, let’s say whale pads, you know, where they go, you know, to have their babies and so forth. So these four.

They illustrate a lot of what’s going on in the ocean. The Water Warriors won the 20, 000 award and we’re really proud and happy of all four of them. Congratulations to them. In addition to biodiversity, some of the big topics now are carbon [00:11:00] sequestration, either natural, through seagrass or kelp, or other man made systems that would sequester carbon.

So we see a lot around there. And then the other third area that I might point to that’s very, very interesting is a lot of observations, measurements, and data that are going to help us do all of these other solutions. And there’s a gap in the world right now of having all the right data. Uh, relative to carbon sequestration, yeah, relative to carbon sequestration, there’s something called MRV, Measurement Reporting and Validation.

So if one is going to buy or sell carbon credits, if one is going to be an investor, and one startup claims that carbon is being sequestered, The, uh, let’s say seagrass, somehow you have to measure and verify that. So this whole data part of it is evolving, it’s, it’s always been there, but it’s growing very, very rapidly.

Crystal: In the prizes that you’ve given over [00:12:00] the years, what have you seen happen afterwards?

Millicent: Oh my. We have the benefit of a history now that’s longer than a decade, uh, several examples. Our very first collegiate award, and we added that into our process in 2015, where we already had a few years under our belt, was awarded to a group of students from Stanford, and we gave them 10, 000.

Flash forward then to 2019, they won our Neptune Award, which is 100, 000.

Crystal: Oh, wow.

Millicent: And they used it to purchase some equipment for their process. And they take captured carbon and they can make it into fuel or other materials. They have now raised 189 million through their B round. They broke ground in the state of Washington for a facility.

Microsoft helped fund that facility, and it’s going to make aviation fuel in partnership with Air Alaska.

Crystal: [00:13:00] I’m going to need to talk to them on forces for nature.

Millicent: So they’re the real deal. Minesto was a Swedish company. We gave them a hundred thousand dollars. They. have a device that anchors in the seabed.

It looks like a kite and it generates energy from tidal motion, not wave motion. And they have received a lot of EU money. They have a big installation in the Faroe islands. Another one, Ecosubsea, now I could go on for a long time, so I’ll give this example and then I’ll stop, okay? Uh, Ecosubsea is a robotic that goes around ships, and it cleans the biofouling around ships, which causes drag, which causes more fuel to be consumed, right?

So it’s a robotic, and it actually collects the biomaterial rather than releasing it into the water, because often it may have invasive species. So it, it does two things. It reduces drag and it helps with the invasive species. They [00:14:00] are in several ports. They are doing very well. They’ve raised money. Um, they won our award in kind of our early days, maybe in, uh, 2014 or 15.

They’re off to the races.

Crystal: I lived close to the Panama Canal for many years. And so I’m very familiar with the issue of what ships are bringing into the canal because of what’s stuck on their hulls and then across to different ecosystems.

Millicent: Well, the traditional way of doing this is sending divers down.

It’s really hazardous material because they literally. Clean the holes. So that’s quite intense. Yes. Intense. And, and not without hazard. And so it keeps those humans from, you know, being in the water.

Crystal: Yeah. So I feel like this is a very obvious question that doesn’t even need to be asked, but why should investors consider funding them?

Millicent: Well, I started off saying that some of these markets are gonna grow faster than. traditional land based markets, so that’s reason number one. [00:15:00] There is quite an intense attention being paid to the ocean right now. And people have asked me, why is that the case? And why wasn’t it the case, you know, a decade ago?

In part, I would give some credit to the UN Ocean Decade. It’s raised a lot of awareness. There was a speaker here yesterday about that. I also think Some very high visible programs like the XPRIZE have raised that attention. So what’s, what’s happening now, I would call it a market signal. The market, that being shipping, or people that manage fisheries, or governments, or people involved in tourism, are giving the signal of the solutions that they need to be more sustainable.

And that is causing then researchers, students, other parties, who may have some ideas already. to understand that there’s some potential customers out there. So it’s a little bit [00:16:00] circular, in a sense. The solutions may actually be there, but now the market is actually developing for them because of pressure from banks and governments through.

regulations or other rules about what they’re expecting and then there’s this whole kind of reporting that’s going on around this and companies want to be responsible. Is there some greenwashing? Of course there always is, but I think many of them their hearts in the right place and they’re trying to solve their own problems and do good things for society and that means that capital is starting to flow into this area.

That’s exciting. And, and you know, I hate to talk about the money part of it. But a lot of these solutions need a lot of capital. If you’re going to put an energy device in the seabed, It takes a lot of capital to do that, and many of these take a lot of capital.

Crystal: Yeah, no, I mean, money’s a necessary evil, but it’s not necessarily evil.

[00:17:00] Yeah. What are some of the challenges for ocean tech getting to market?

Millicent: Yeah, so I told you the good news, capital’s flowing in. The more difficult part of it, if you’re going to put big mechanical things in the ocean, they have to be robust. It’s more difficult to operate in the ocean than many land uses.

What it frequently means is the time from idea to actual deployment can be years. Years can be a decade. Many of us think about innovation and we think about an app on our phone that may, you know, help us figure out what restaurant we’re going to go to, right? The idea to deployment. To getting capital could be a year.

I mean, these are really short. Putting things in the ocean that can survive the mechanical pieces have to, you know, live and operate can take a decade. Many of the innovators that we see, they start working on their solutions, let’s [00:18:00] say, and they’re maybe a master’s program, they got a PhD. Average PhD is seven years, and they may be two or three years out of their PhD still working on this before they’re really raising the big money.

It’s, it’s a long haul, and that’s a big, big challenge. In some cases, they can’t survive that long haul. So, what’s the optimistic view about that? There is philanthropy that is moving in, into this area to help. I’ll use Ocean Exchange as an example. We take family and corporate philanthropy, Put it in a big pot, we go find these startups, the innovators, we vet them through a process that’s quite robust, and then we redistribute it as philanthropy.

In some cases, the philanthropists directly give the money to the innovators through grants. Then there is something called impact capital. that has evolved. In the old days, it used to be called [00:19:00] concessionary capital, but it means it’s an investment, but the party giving it is so aligned with the mission that they’re willing to accept perhaps a lower return.

So, we see Families, for example, very high net worth families who have a great passion for the ocean. They want that money to go in there. They’re willing to take a lower return in exchange for doing something good for the ocean and society and, and for their future generations. Right. And then there’s traditional capital, of course.

Crystal: Yeah. Which is kind of what you were mentioning before. Through all the panels yesterday and, and innovations that you’ve seen, did anything else stand out to you?

Millicent: Uh, in the investor piece of the program, which was Tuesday and Wednesday as well, I think, there were some very interesting conversations about the energy transition.

Some officials, State of Texas. The [00:20:00] chair of the Dallas Fed spoke, and all of them, supporting the energy transition, though, talked very honestly about all the difficulties and the challenges, and often we only hear, you know, we need to do this, and we have to do this, and it’s a good thing, but we don’t understand.

Kind of the broad set of questions that come with this and one case the Dallas Federal Reserve executive talked about the extremely negative impact on families that make less than 50, 000 of inflation and some of the energy transition and it was quite Startling to hear all that and it just makes us all step back and Say, you know, we have to do this in a way that we’re moving forward, but not destroying certain segments of the, of society, not just in the US but elsewhere.

Crystal: Yeah. I mean, there’s also so much talk about climate justice and. There’s no justice [00:21:00] if you’re making other families poor in the, in the process of this energy transition or evolution, if you, if you will.

Millicent: Yeah, there’s no right or wrong answer in a lot of this. What I got out of it really was the complexity of it.

And we talk about the technology a lot, but from a, Um, society point of view, the extreme complexity of it came out in those conversations and I, I thought it was something we all needed to hear.

Crystal: That’s what I’ve really enjoyed about EarthX so much is that it’s really bringing in the different sides and pointing things out that perhaps I wouldn’t necessarily have access to in like the little algorithmic silo that I’m in, you know, that I get access to.

So this has been great. Solutions are my thing, and I’m so excited to hear of all these really great inventions that are happening and being funded and supported. Melissa, thank you for joining me today, [00:22:00] and thank you for all you do. You’re making a difference. Yeah, thank you for giving me

Millicent: this opportunity.

Crystal: It’s inspiring to hear how Ocean Exchange is not only finding innovative solutions for ocean health, but also helping to turn those ideas into reality. As Millicent pointed out, the blue economy is growing. And with the right support, these ocean based initiatives can drive both environmental progress and economic opportunity.

If today’s conversation sparked your interest, consider looking into the startups and initiatives making waves in this space. Share their stories, support their work. Or even explore ways that you can get involved. Whether through advocacy, investment, or simply spreading awareness. The ocean is vital for life on Earth.

Even for those who are nowhere near it. It’s time to give it the attention and [00:23:00] investment that it deserves.

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