People 2/4
Taking action comes easy to Are Børgesen. An ex-army man and a commercial airline pilot, he is also an accomplished diver and skiier to boot. But it was when engaging with his other great love that he hit, or hopes to, hit paydirt. The year was 2004 and he was captaining a crew in a competitively natured regatta in Haugesund, Norway. Or at least he was trying to. After what seemed like an eternity battling against the current, and with an unforgiving wind battering the spinnaker from behind, it soon became clear nobody was going anywhere. “Then the idea dawned on me,”
Børgesen exclaims, excitedly recalling the ignominy. “What if we put the sailboat upside-down and put the spinnaker, with its 20m mast, down into the water? Then we will get a lot of power!” The experiment worked a treat, the sails catching the tide and guiding the disgruntled crew to the finish line. Yet if victory eluded Børgesen on that occasion, he knew he was onto something. A renewable energy aficionado from a young age – the eco-friendly house he lives in was built by his own hand – he became intrigued with discovering
Børgesen claims that Tidal Sails' concept is cheap and has high profit margins how to harness the power he had so vividly encountered that day, and putting it to effective use. It was, he surmised, an obsessive journey well worth taking. As recent estimates by RenewableUK suggests, there will be plenty of call for the company that can finally crack the marine (wave and tidal) conundrum; the UK alone could potentially meet a fifth of its total electricity needs from wave and tidal energy by 2050.
In the renewable energy associa- tion’s report, The Next Steps for Marine Energy, it predicts that a “properly
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