OTEC Africa is an organization promoting the use of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology (OTEC) to help low-income countries establish a sound infrastructure. OTEC is a hundred-year-old but little known clean technology for extracting energy from sea water. In addition to producing electricity, the sea water running through an OTEC facility becomes desalinated, and can produce thousands of cubic meters of drinking water every day.

In short, the OTEC method can be described as follows: Platforms are placed on or near a coastline with warm surface water, where cold deep-sea water is pumped to the surface using long pipes. It is then possible to transform the difference in heat energy to electricity through the use of heat exchangers and turbines.

OTEC only works where the difference between the ocean surface and the deep water is at least 20 degrees Celsius, and for this reason countries near the equator benefit the most from the use of OTEC. Industrialized countries/regions having use for OTEC include Japan, Southern USA, and India.

OTEC would be of even more value to several developing countries in Africa, such as Tanzania, Kenya, and the Western Africa region. Therefore, OTEC Africa invites representatives from governments and aid institutions, from the construction and energy industries, and from the research community to make OTEC technology well-known and used in both low- and high-income countries.

Welcome to this web site where you can read more about this promising, pollution-free technology.