Atlantis resources

COMPANY PROFILE

2014

Atlantis Resources

+65 6238 6002 | www.atlantisresourcesltd.com

Atlantis’ tidal power is no myth

Editorial: Harriet Pattison

Tidal stream power is considered a much more environmentally friendly and predictable renewable energy source causing minimal visual impact. Chief Executive of Atlantis Resources, one of the world leaders in the tidal energy industry, Tim Cornelius tells Total World Energy about the exciting development underway in the Pentland Firth in Scotland which is hoping to provide enough electricity to power 175,000 homes…

Tidal current power is not always the first source of sustainable energy that one may consider when thinking of modern day renewable resources but in fact it benefits from being a clean, renewable and far more predictable alternative.

Singapore based Atlantis Resources is an industry leader in the tidal power sector, growing significantly since its inception over a decade ago.

Chief Executive, Tim Cornelius

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tells Total World Energy about the company’s significant growth and development within this growing sector of renewable energy: “Atlantis has a ten year history of developing tidal power technology and of tidal power projects. The genesis of the company was that it was a small publicly unlisted company in Australia.

“It was looking at early rudimentary systems for extracting the energy from the flow of the

tide. When I became involved in the business we essentially acquired the intellectual property from that company and moved over to Singapore which is where we incorporated Atlantis Resources, which at the time was Atlantis Resources Corporation.

“That was really the genesis of the modern company that you see before you today,” explains Cornelius. “At that point in time we started to expand out of Singapore,

Atlantis Resources Singapore is still the headquarters for the listed company, Atlantis Resources Limited. So the original genesis was Australia but very quickly moved to Singapore,” he says.

Cornelius, who trained as a marine biologist, started his career as a commercial diver who also worked on manned submarines and unmanned ROVs. “I worked for a long time in the offshore oil and gas field construction industry.

I worked all over the world for about a decade on specialist construction vessels, oil rigs and semi-submersible platforms. I made the transition from working

offshore to working onshore and during that period I became very interested in the emissions market.

I spent time studying carbon and the emissions market with a focus on NOx (nitrogen oxides) and SOx (sulphur oxides) and other environmental derivatives that are traded to effectively limit the economic impact of weather on large construction projects.

“During that phase, I was approached by what was then the board of Atlantis Energy Limited. I understand offshore construction and engineering and about the financial markets so they asked if I was interested to come and run the

company.”

The decision to move Atlantis to Singapore in 2005, Cornelius explains, was based on a number of reasons, including the research and development opportunities: “The first reason was access to Asian markets, which naturally made sense. Second of all, access to high quality and relatively low cost engineering resource and thirdly, Singapore is a very good jurisdiction for the development of intellectual property and the prosecution of infringement. We saw in the early stages, as with all technology companies, that intellectual property was going to

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a very big part of us going forward and therefore it made a lot of sense to move to Singapore.”

The research and development of tidal power has seen an increase in recent years due to new technological developments and improvements. Advancements in design including the dynamic tidal power and tidal lagoons and new developments in turbine technologies, improving axial turbines and cross flow turbines, have helped to develop the availability and viability of implementing tidal power projects in locations around the world.

With oceans covering up to 70% of the earth’s surface, tidal streams have the potential to provide an unlimited source of energy and offer many benefits to other renewable energy sectors. With tidal turbines PAGE 20

located beneath sea level the natural environment doesn’t undergo significant alterations, there is less visual impact and fewer fluctuations are present as tidal turbines remain almost independent of changing weather conditions.

Because water is much denser than air, the tidal turbines only need small rotors compared to the impressive rotor span of wind turbines. Smaller tidal rotors also mean less seabed per square meter is required because they can be placed much closer together.

GROWING SUPPORT FOR TIDAL POWER Renewable energy has seen an increase in support in recent years with the Scottish government in particular showing strong support

for variable renewable energy development through both policy and legislation. It is estimated that 71 countries now having a feed-in policy in place to support renewable energies.

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 imposes a legal commitment on the Scottish government to reduce emissions by 42% from 1990 by 2020 and by 80% by 2050, a target which can only be achieved through substantial exploitation of Scotland’s considerable sustainable resources.

“The UK now has an obvious ability for us to be able to expand our portfolio of project development and there are other sites in Scotland that we’re looking at right now,” explains Cornelius. “There are also sites in England and Wales,

Atlantis Resources so the UK is obviously very exciting for us because we understand it well and understand the regulatory regime.”

GLOBAL PROJECTS With support for tidal power growing, research into appropriate grid access and economically viable locations is vital for companies like Atlantis. Cornelius explains the preliminary checks that determine whether development on a site can begin: “There’s a big difference between what is determined to be economically extractable and what we consider to be just net resource.

“Ultimately, what dictates where you elect to develop a site comes down to two main things: Firstly, nature of resource, take that as a given, it obviously has to be an area of strong flow. Secondly, access

to grid. You’ll find that one of the largest rate determining steps in the world is that typically huge amounts of tidal power is located in areas where you’ll never be able to evacuate the power in a meaningful or economically way. For example, Russia has got some of the largest tidal ranges in the world but its five and a half thousand kilometres away from anywhere that you could connect to,” he says.

The potential of tidal power is enormous and although estimates of the global potential vary, it has been estimated in a study by Black & Veatch that tidal stream energy could, in theory, supply more than 150 terawatt-hours (TWh) per annum. Where one terawatt-hour per year equates to 114 MW, this is well in excess of all domestic electricity consumption in the UK

and therefore represents a potential total global market size of up to 90GW of generating capacity.

As 25% of Europe’s tidal energy potential resources come from Scotland, The Pentland Firth is now widely considered to be one of, if not the world’s best site for tidal power. Because the water flow is rapid, the tide shifting from the Atlantic into the North Sea is forced through a narrow eight-mile channel, making it a perfect site for development. In a recent study by Oxford University, it’s estimated that this site alone has the potential to provide half of Scotland’s electricity.

Cornelius explains that looking outside the UK, France has strong potential for tidal power. It has interesting technology for deep water projects, great resources and the government is pro-tidal. “It’s

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going to be a good market going forward,” Cornelius says.

“It will be one of the next markets to come on and we are consistently looking for opportunities to enter into development arrangements in France because France is the other highly developing country for perspective for tidal power,” explains Cornelius.

Next on the company’s radar is Canada in the Bay of Fundy between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which is the most promising location in Canada for tidal energy and has the potential to produce as much as 30,000 MW of energy.

“We’re currently exploring an opportunity to develop there with

Tim Cornelius © Shell PAGE 22

our project partners, Lockheed Martin,” Cornelius explains.

THE MEYGEN PROJECT It is the MeyGen Project however, which is placing Atlantis on such a pedestal within the tidal energy industry. Located in the far north of Scotland, in the Pentland Firth, MeyGen is Atlantis’ flagship project.

“The unusual thing about Scotland,” explains Cornelius, “is that it’s got very good resource, the resource is very close to shore and we were able to get good connection to national grid to be able to dispatch the power down south. So from that perspective, it

had all of the attributes to make it an ideal place to develop.”

MeyGen Limited, now 86% owned by Atlantis, is the company behind the project. Powered solely by the tide, the project will generate enough electricity to power up to 175,000 Scottish homes and is hoping to deliver a fully operational renewable energy plant of an estimated 398 MW. With a total of £51.3 million having been secured from syndicate members comprising the UK government, through the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), The Crown Estate

Atlantis Resources (TCE) and Atlantis, Cornelius explains why this project is so important, not only to Atlantis but the tidal industry: “It’s the first to go through its consents, it’s the largest project in the world and it’s the first project ever to receive a project financing package. So it’s now the flagship not only for Atlantis but for the entire global tidal industry so effectively it’s setting the bench mark now for how long it takes to develop a project, how one seeks to design it, build it and more importantly finance it.”

With the first phase of the project scheduled for installation during 2015, Cornelius reveals what can be seen at the Scottish site now: “The first thing that you’ll see is bulldozers on site building the big substation for the project. The substation is obviously onshore and then we drill all the cables, so throughout the remainder of this year into next year all of the onshore works are occurring, all the civil works and the cables will get drilled out so all of the horizontally directional drilled cables will be out to the site.

“Each of our turbine manufacturers will commence fabricating turbines and they will get delivered on site middle to the end of next year. They’ll go through their commissioning onshore and we’ll look to get them out into the water at the end of next year, beginning of 2016 depending on progress. So quite a rapid development cycle, with respect to going from a green field site to turbines generating and putting into the grid,” he explains.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT Cornelius explains that Atlantis continues to have a strong support network from the Scottish

community that will benefit from the MeyGen project.

“It should go very smoothly, the reality is this has been a five year planning and consenting process.

We’ve done a huge amount of stakeholder engagement, we’ve got a very strong local support base in the community and it should be an economically stimulating development at the same time in a very environmentally benign way and I think everyone appreciates that.

“We don’t have the same opposition that sometimes occurs with onshore wind. With a tidal turbine you don’t see it and you don’t hear it and because they are being installed in a location of high flow, fishermen aren’t interested. So we would expect to think that from a permitting, consenting and environmental perspective, things should go well.

“We’ve engaged with some of the biggest and best equipment suppliers in the world, with the likes of Andritz, ABB and Lockheed Martin and we’re very confident of their capability to deliver,” explains Cornelius.

‘ONE OF THE WORLD LEADERS’ “I think we’re definitely one of the world leaders; I think the fact that we’ve been able to get MeyGen through consenting shows that we lead. I understand we need to verify this but I understand it’s the first offshore project, including offshore wind, to have received its full consents for construction from the Energy Minister in Scotland and to sign a formal 25 year lease with The Crown Estate in Scottish waters.

We are obviously delighted to have high quality providers of

technology in our sector with the likes of Siemens, Alstom and Voith. These are all high quality companies, we hope they will become equipment suppliers to Atlantis going forward. I wouldn’t say we’re the best because I think that’s dangerous, but I think we are one of.”

Looking to the future it seems set to be a busy and exciting one for Atlantis seeing such impressive growth and potential in the decade since it started.

“Atlantis has evolved as the company,” explains Cornelius. “A decade ago we were a technology company that did a little bit of project development because we had to to create a market into which to sell our turbines. These days we are essentially a project development and financing company in the marine energy sector which also does a little bit of technology because we have to.”

With construction on the MeyGen site commencing later this year, Cornelius explains what’s next for Atlantis, with potential to venture into the wind energy sector: “Our core skill base is definitely offshore marine power projects and to that extent, we would never rule out looking at opportunities to develop offshore wind.

“There are a lot of natural synegies in the way you evacuate power so what I would expect our next step to be would be to look at opportunities to combine the development of offshore wind along with the development of tidal power in similar geographic locations and start to look at sharing common power evacuation systems to drive economies of scale,” Cornelius concludes

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