CARNEGIE CLEAN ENERGY LTD (CCE) - From Basque Waves To Defence Grids: The Rise Of Intelligent Ocean Energy

Waves don’t just crash; they carry steady, reliable energy that can help power the grid. We sit down with Jonathan Fievez, CEO of Carnegie Clean Energy, to explore how CETO—a submerged, three‑belt buoy system—captures that motion and turns it into electricity. Jonathan walks us through the upcoming Phase 3 EuropeWave deployment at the Biscay Marine Energy Platform in the Basque Country, why that site accelerates learning with grid and environmental approvals in place, and how a successful launch becomes a defining moment for utilities evaluating wave energy at scale.

We dig into the engineering in clear terms: how the buoy stays a few metres below the surface, why drum-driven shafts and integrated tensioners matter for power quality, and how electricity is delivered ashore. Then we widen the lens. Carnegie’s MoorPower concept aims at diesel displacement for aquaculture barges, using the barge’s natural motion to generate energy and cut refueling risks. On the defence front, persistent sensing and surveillance need more power than batteries can offer; wave-driven systems can keep remote nodes online for longer with higher-fidelity data.

Control is where the cost curve bends. Backed by the EU-funded COIN program, Carnegie is advancing short-horizon wave prediction and AI-based reinforcement learning controls developed with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The goal: survive brutal seas while extracting more energy from every set, and reduce costs via predictive maintenance. Jonathan also outlines the funding strategy—non‑dilutive grants and R&D tax credits in Australia and the Basque Country—and the near-term investor milestones: EuropeWave deployment, operational data, and progress toward a multi‑megawatt, full-scale project that aligns with Europe’s push for resilient, indigenous renewable energy.

If you’re curious about how ocean power can complement wind and solar with winter-peaking output and a compact footprint, this is a timely, practical dive into the next frontier of clean energy. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves climate tech, and leave a review with your top question about wave farms.

Transcript

Andrew Musgrave

Welcome again to ASX Briefs, the podcast bringing you quick, insightful conversations with leaders of ASX Listed companies. And today we're joined by Jonathan Fievez, the CEO of Carnegie Clean Energy Limited, an Australian wave energy pioneer that is currently leading the charge to commercialise its advanced CETO and MoorPower technologies in European and domestic markets. 
 
 Jonathan, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast.

Jonathan Fievez

Yeah, great to be here. Thank you.

Andrew Musgrave

Now, Jonathan, for listeners that may be new to Carnegie, could you explain the fundamental mechanics of the CETO technology and just provide a bit of an overview of the company?

Jonathan Fievez

Yeah, for sure. Carnegie is a technology company. We're developing a wave energy technology. So, we capture, you know, the energy that's in ocean waves, the kind of waves that move ships around. And we capture that energy, convert it into electricity. And so, our core technology to do that is what we call CETO. You can go onto our website, there's a great animation of how it works. But essentially, you know, it's a buoy, it's a few meters below the surface, so it's buoyant, it wants to float to the surface, but it's held down by multiple mooring connections. And what happens is the waves push down as much as they pull up on the buoy as the waves pass, and that motion that is caused by that wave coming past is the bit that that really creates the electricity. And you know, to kind of I guess explain how it converts that, imagine uh three belts that are sort of anchored to the seabed rising up and wrapping around a drum, three separate drums, one for each belt, in the buoy. So, it's kind of like it's kind of like a winch system, three winches holding the buoy down underwater. And of course, as the buoy is forced to move by the waves up and down, the belts have to rotate the drums that they're mounted to as they extend, for instance. And on the drum is mounted to a shaft, and on that shaft, we have a generator that is the component that that generates the electricity, so just rotation of the shaft, rotating the generator, generating electricity. And we also on the same shaft have what we call the tensioner, which is essentially a spring which holds that force. So in if you imagine in in flat water the buoy is a few meters below the surface and it wants to rise up, but it's being held there by the tensioner system, and then any motion induced by the wave forces causes the drum to rotate, and then yeah, we generate electricity. And that electricity then goes to shore via cable and powers cities and towns and you know, get goes into the grid essentially with all the other electricity that's generated.

Andrew Musgrave

Now you've recently completed several key manufacturing milestones for the ACHIEVE program, triggering roughly $613,000 in payments. With fabrication of the buoyant actuator and foundation structures moving forward, how critical is this phase three deployment at the Biscay Marine Energy Platform for proving CETO's commercial viability to the global utility market?

Jonathan Fievez

Yeah, so what you're talking about there is this project to deploy CETO for the first time in Europe and also the first time of this new generation of technology. We've deployed in Australia multiple versions of the sort of earlier generations, but this new generation with the three belts as I described is going in the water for the first time this year, around sort of the middle of the year in the European summer. And the reason we're doing it there is because we were awarded  a phase three contract from this competitive program called EuropeWave. We're actually one of 36 companies that originally applied for phase one, and then we were awarded a phase two contract as well, and now we're in phase three, which is the phase where we actually go and deploy it in the water. We've also, in addition to the funding you mentioned, we've also secured funding from the Spanish federal government and the Basque regional government because this device being deployed in an area they call the Basque Country, which is a semi-autonomous region near the border of France and Spain. And really, it's got a long history of surfing and wave-oriented activity up there because you know it's sort of exposed to the Atlantic waves that that form out in the sea and come in. So, it's a great place to do it and in particular because the Biscay Marine Energy Platform is actually a test centre, a test site offshore that's been specifically developed for wave energy and other ocean energy test activities. So, all the environmental approvals, all the grid connection requirements, they're all done. And so yeah, we can really focus on developing our device and deploying it. It's not the full-scale device though, and so yeah, this is a great opportunity to really deploy I guess all the technology that we've developed embedded in this relatively large-scale device. So, it's still big. I mean it's 10 meters in diameter and a few meters tall. So, imagine a hockey puck sort of shape, ice hockey puck. And yeah, it's not small. And yeah, we've we're hitting the milestones as we go, which is triggering the payments so the great thing here is that you know there is a lot of support for wave energy in Europe and particularly in places like Spain where they've got good waves, because you know, it's getting harder and harder to build solar and wind. There's increasingly pushback from the community. And so yeah, there's, they really need a really consistent sort of provision of energy and energy from the ocean delivers that. And so, yeah, in terms of, I guess, you know, shareholders, this is a real inflection point for the company because, for years we've been talking about this new version of the technology. You know, we've been showing pictures of engineers with computer screens in front of them, and you know, cool pictures and animations, but you know, seeing is believing. And this project is one where we'll see a large device that is you know really housing a lot of the innovation we've been developing over that time. And it's and it's really drawing the attention of a lot of energy companies, large energy companies and utilities that really don't want to be left behind in this new emerging technology space. So, for that reason, that's why this ACHIEVE program is you know massively critical for the company and as I say, a real inflection point for us and hopefully for our valuation.

Andrew Musgrave

Now, the company was recently awarded the Power and Energy Innovation Award by the Australian Department of Defence. Beyond a utility scale power, what unique opportunities do you see for the energy autonomy at sea in the defence and aquaculture sectors via your MoorPower technology?

Jonathan Fievez

Yeah, so MoorPower is the name we give to one of our spin-off technologies. And so, focusing on that for a moment, you know, it's essentially a barge with what we call the power take-offs from CETO on the corners of the barge. So, you know, as I mentioned before, CETO has these three power take-offs, but really imagine they're winches. And so those power take-offs or winches are on the corners of this barge. And as a barge rides the waves, as it does in certainly in an aquaculture setting, but any barge that's or vessel that's moored offshore will have to endure waves, especially those that are sort of in open ocean. And so that motion of the barge riding up and down on the waves, we can convert that motion into electricity. And so, we've really been targeting aquaculture because we're a member of the Blue Economy CRC, which is a federal government kind of group that brings together industry and academia and government around a common theme. And in this case, it's the Blue Economy, which you know really centres on growing food from the oceans, getting energy from the oceans. And you know, so we're we've teamed up with a bunch of aquaculture groups, and we've been sort of developing this technology through that relationship because you know they're burning diesel to power these barges. And you know that creates all sorts of challenges for them. Of course, diesel's high cost and also very variable cost, it's hard to predict what the diesel price is going to be in the future. Of course, it's polluting, and whilst I guess pollution taxes have been shelved for a little while, they're you know, everyone believes they'll be coming back soon. So, you really need to reduce pollution just from an economic perspective, and also, it's the right thing to do from a corporate citizenship perspective. But also, I mean, in their case, they want to be more autonomous, they want to have these barges out at sea and not have to refuel them so often and risk spilling fuel and having people climbing on decks with hoses and things like that who can slip over. So, there's all sorts of reasons why having your own power source on a barge that's moving anyway with the waves, whether you like it or not, is a good idea. That's really the MoorPower part of it. The defence side is a more recent development, and MoorPower could be applicable, but it's probably going to require a more customized solution. Our engagement with defence really started through this advanced strategic capability accelerator or ASCA. And they awarded us a place at the pitch day where companies are invited to go and pitch their technologies, and we were awarded the power and energy category. And yeah, that's stimulated quite a lot of discussion, and we've become yeah, quite busy in that that space since then and just before then, because you know, defence is obviously a strong theme at the moment, and sensing and surveillance at sea is a really big deal. And the sensors that they want to place in the ocean to understand vessel traffic, submarine traffic, and so forth, they need power.  They're often powered by batteries currently that then need recharging, or they have to come up with schemes which are really low power, which does it doesn't give them the kind of quality of data they could get if they had I guess more abundant power. And you know, where they're deploying these, they do have abundant power, and that's in the waves. So, we yeah, we're working with a bunch of technology and sort of supply companies in the defence sector that have these sensor technologies that need power, and yeah, we're working towards a solution for them. And, yeah, it seems like it's really filling a gap that's going to change the well what they call the asymmetric advantage for defence.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, and the 4 million euro EU funded COIN project recently kicked off with a focus on reducing the cost of wave energy by 30%. So, can you walk us through some of the specific control-oriented innovations you're testing and how they help pave the way for large-scale wave energy farms?

Jonathan Fievez

Yeah, so this is back on to CETO. And COIN is one of three multi-million-euro programs actually that we're part of, and where CETO is the reference technology. So, you know, while whilst these programs, I guess, are intended to be a bit generic and develop aspects that support other technologies, they're specifically using CETO as the reference technology. So, you know, we there's a much straighter line between what they develop and plugging it into CETO. So, it's really important that we nurture and support these developments. They're also in most cases almost 100% funded, meaning that our staff get paid to take part in them, which is always good for shareholders as well. But they provide the innovations that that we plug in to our technology as the technology gets further and further through its life cycle, and they're reducing costs and improving performance along the way. So, but if we speak specifically about COIN, as you said, it's control-oriented innovation. So, this is control is really in our case, control is really facete about controlling the forces in the mooring lines, so the three belts, controlling those forces to manage the position of the buoy on a sort of a you know second by second basis, to do a few things. One is to survive. So clearly the ocean is a brutal place, and we need to be able to survive the extreme wave conditions. But you know, the reason we're there is to capture that energy, and we want to capture that in the most efficient way possible. So COIN is really looking at that in particular, in that it's developing further the wave prediction technology. So, this isn't weather forecasting, this is just looking very short term, you know, 10 seconds, 20 seconds ahead of time, seeing what waves are coming, and then making decisions about those forces in the moorings in order to capture the most energy from that wave that's coming. And we've actually proven that that's entirely possible ourselves a few years ago, but COIN will take that further again. But I would say probably the most exciting part of COIN is the controller that's been developed. We've had, I think for maybe five years, a collaboration agreement with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. So, you know, this is a giant of the AI and compute space, and they've been working with us and for us to develop a control algorithm that's based on AI that learns. I mean, it's it the technical term is reinforcement learning, and it just learns about how to do things better. And by better, we mean you survive storms and make more electricity from each wave. So that this program, which is which is underway now, is supporting them to develop this further this AI control code that really you know turns this wave energy device into you know a pro surfer for want of a better term, because it's really optimizing its behaviour to maximize the energy from every wave. There are some other aspects to the to the project as well, which is relates to you know predictive maintenance, for instance, you know, where we're trying to ensure that we can foresee fatigue and damage to things. So yeah, there's a bunch of elements to it, but they're the key ones that are and it's a super exciting project and a really amazing consortium of groups from Spain and Germany and Ireland, yeah, different places all coming together, collaborating.

Andrew Musgrave

Now finally, Jonathan, to finish up with a healthy cash balance of nearly four million dollars and the sale of RD tax credits providing a significant non-dilutive funding boost, what are some of the key highlights investors should look out for over the next 12 months?

Jonathan Fievez

Yeah, so I mean, we just on the bit about cash balance and tax credits and things and non-dilutive funding you know, we think the best management for shareholders is one where we absolutely maximise the available non-dilutive funding that's on offer, which and that includes tax credits for RD. And you know, we we've been benefiting from the Australian tax credit system, but we've just recently been awarded well received tax credits in the Basque Country as well, which has a very good scheme for RD tax credits. So yeah, we think that's a really important part of being good at technology development, which is you know being good at finding good grant funding that is non-dilutive. But getting back to your question about, you know, what are the key things shareholders should be watching out for. Well, I mean, deployment this year is clearly the focus, and I know no doubt shareholders are already very focused on that, as they should be, because as I say, I think it's a real inflection point. And you know, the big energy companies, the big utilities are really they're there on our doorstep, you know, in Europe. So, they'll be physically being able to see it in in person, being in the water and then and then operating. I mean, that's probably the only downside about being a submerged technology is that it's a little hard to see it once it's in the water. You have to go swimming or use a little robot to go and look at it. But you know, like seeing it on the on the dock there and lowered in and then towed out to sea and then and then installed, you know, that'll be massive. So that's definitely a huge focus. But you know, we don't have the luxury of waiting until that project's kind of complete before we start thinking about the next one, because you know these projects take time. So, you know we're working on the next project which is aiming to be a multi-megawatt project. Can't be too specific about exactly what it is, but yeah, we're targeting a multi-megawatt project of a full-scale deployment of our technology. Of course every technology step will be an improvement, so we'll bake in a few of the improvements that and the learnings that we've gathered along the way. And the good news is the EU is very, very keen to diversify their energy mix and increase the kind of you know indigenous energy that they're getting from their own shores, which is which makes a whole lot of sense from an energy security perspective. So yeah, there's plenty more non-dilutive support that's out there that we'll be um we'll be tapping into. And yeah, that's probably the next thing for shareholders to really focus on. 

Andrew Musgrave

OK Jonathan, well, it's been great, good chat today to get an update on the company. So, thanks for your time, and we look forward to further updates from Carnegie Clean Energy in the upcoming months.

Jonathan Fievez

 Thank you very much. 

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe, and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.