Wave energy is gaining renewed attention for its ability to provide predictable power, complementing wind and solar to reduce the cost of clean electricity, while strengthening system resilience and energy autonomy.
With an estimated capacity of 1.8 terawatts (TW) globally and approximately 500 GW that is readily exploitable, wave energy could one day supply an estimated 10%–20% of global electricity demand. The United States alone sits atop a theoretical wave energy resource of up to 2.64 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, equivalent to roughly 63% of its total utility-scale generation.
The sector has been held back by complex marine engineering challenges, high capital costs and high levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).
That’s where CorPower Ocean comes in. It has developed patented wave energy converters that aim to solve marine engineering problems and reduce costs to levels competitive with established renewables, positioning the Swedish scale-up to help drive global wave energy at a commercial scale.
Strategic investors include SEB Greentech, Cisco Investments, Santander Asset Management, InnoEnergy, Acario, the investment arm of Tokyo Gas based in Silicon Valley, and GTT Strategic Ventures, part of French engineering group GTT.
The company was awarded a prize March 18 from the European Innovation Council Scaling Club, an EIC-funded curated community of 120 European deep tech scale-ups, which pairs scale-ups with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth. The prize was for raising more money than any other climate company in the program. The Swedish scale-up has raised a total of €151 million in strategic investment, venture capital and government grants. In January CorPower Ocean was named in the Cleantech Group’s 2026 Global Cleantech 100, marking the third consecutive year the company has been recognized as one of the world’s most promising cleantech innovators and in March it was selected to join the Spring 2026 cohort of Mastercard Lighthouse MASSIV, a partnership program connecting high-potential sustainability startups with global corporations, financial institutions and investors.
“Fighting climate change is our main motivator but also resilience and energy independence,” says Anders Jansson, CorPower’s head of business development. “We haven’t found any way using current technology to get to 100% fossil free energy. People and companies need cheap electricity, and Europe needs to be competitive – and especially with what is currently happening – energy independence is key.”
One major obstacle to including wave power into the energy mix was that wave converters could easily break. CorPower’s breakthrough realization was that the pumping principle of the human heart could revolutionize capturing wave energy. Just as the heart stores and releases energy to create a continuous, reliable flow, the scale-up’s system uses air pressure to return buoys to their neutral position between waves. This approach not only allows it to use a light-weight buoy, when combined with a patented negative spring function called WaveSpring, the buoys can adapt to changing conditions. This protects the equipment from breaking and makes it possible to optimize the power capture – boosting energy yield by up to five times (per amount of equipment) compared to conventional solutions, according to Jansson. Think of it like a kid on a swing, he says. As soon as the swing starts to move back when it is pushed it will automatically go higher, says Jansson. “In the same way our spring creates a swinging movement that helps us to create a lot of energy.” The buoy has proven reliability in the harshest Atlantic Ocean conditions, withstanding 18.5 meter storm waves, according to the company.
“Our approach is a massive step in efficiency that is needed for wave power to be commercially viable, survive the harsh environment and to do it cost effectively,” he says.
Becoming Cost Competitive
Cost competitiveness has been a challenge for the industry. Studies from LUT University and Delft University of Technology project wave power reaching LCOE levels below 100 €/MWh by 2030 and below 70 €/MWh by 2035—which would make it competitive with offshore wind. Separately, third-party analyses referenced by CorPower Ocean—including work by McKinsey & Company—indicate that wave energy technology of the CorPower type could become competitive with wind and solar after approximately 600 MW of cumulative global deployment, a milestone that requires a period of public support to bridge.
The inclusion of wave energy consistently leads to a more efficient and balanced system, with significant performance and cost benefits, according to CorPower’s own study. It contends that:
- Total installed capacity can be reduced by 20%-24% from including wave in base scenarios and 9-12% in constrained scenarios.
- Energy requirements from battery storage can be decreased by 39% in base scenarios and by 96% in constrained scenarios.
- LCOE can be reduced by 4%-20% in base scenarios and 51-60% in constrained scenarios.
- Even when wave is 3.5x the cost of offshore wind it provides system benefits.
Testing The Technology
CorPower Ocean has been selected to lead the €30 million POWER-Farm EU Project, addressing the competitiveness and bankability of wave farms by validating the technology in conditions required for large-scale deployment in UK waters. The initiative, partly funded by a €19 million grant from Horizon Europe, will underscore wave energy’s role as a mainstream renewable sector. With potential to supply up to 17% of electricity in key EU countries by 2050, the project also targets volume manufacturing across the EU, reinforcing Europe’s leadership in clean energy innovation. The consortium includes EMEC (European Marine Energy Centre), The University of Edinburgh, Ocean Energy Europe, Renewable Risk Advisers and Kristinehamn Teknik & Service. “We are currently doing all the engineering studies on harbors and sea beds before we build there,” says Jansson. CorPower plans to be operational there in 2029. “Today the only way to balance the grid in the UK when there is no wind is to use gas and batteries,” he says. “We are confident we can replace fossil fuel electric generation without increasing the cost.”
The Swedish scale-up has been producing electricity for the Portuguese grid since 2023 and is now building its first commercial wave converter farm in Portugal but, he concedes, “we need market support for the first arrays.”
CorPower plans to later target Norway, Ireland, France and Spain. It already has customers in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, Jansson says.
Competitors include Canada’s Voltai, Scotland’s Mocean Energy, and Sweden’s Eco Wave Power.
In addition to its patented technology, differentiators include its size – CorPower employs 100 people, about 5x more than its closest competitor – and “we invest a lot in innovation around the supply chain and how we manufacture to improve our technology and scalability,” says Jansson. “We’re not just a tech company,” he says. “We are also working on industrializing our technology.”
State-of-Play
Wave energy’s potential is scientifically validated. The technology is advancing: newer wind energy converters like CorPower’s have far higher capture efficiency than earlier devices, survivability has been proven in extreme ocean conditions, and modular manufacturing concepts are beginning to emerge. Multiple government jurisdictions are providing material financial support. And a credible cost-reduction pathway exists, supported by academic modelling and third-party commercial analysis including McKinsey & Co, pointing to cost competitiveness with offshore wind by the 2030s.
At the same time, the industry remains pre-commercial at scale. The number of grid-connected, revenue-generating wave installations worldwide remains very small. LCOE is 5–25x higher than solar and wind. The industry’s critical near-term milestone is reaching approximately 600 MW of cumulative global deployment—the threshold at which independent analyses suggest wave energy becomes commercially self-sustaining. Getting there will require continued public support in the form of R&D grants, test infrastructure, and preferential permitting.
With the right support, the same dynamics of economies of scale, manufacturing learning curves, and supply chain maturation that transformed solar and wind can make wave energy increasingly competitive across a widening range of coastal markets, helping to power the grid and energy-hungry data centers while reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels, Jansson says.
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