Akselos 2022 In Review: Helping Accelerate the Transition to Net Zero
2022 was a successful year for the team at Akselos. It was the year that we celebrated our?10th birthday , having begun life as an MIT start-up in 2012. We also grew to almost 100 staff members and built on our and expanded into Australia, securing deals with leading energy providers.
2022 also saw us close a?$16.5 million funding round ?and join the?World Economic Forum's Global Innovator's Community ?- a group of the world's most promising scale-ups at the forefront of technological and business model innovation.
However, above all, 2022 was a year of significant progress towards our core mission: using our revolutionary engineering software to help accelerate the transition to net zero emissions by 2050.
Akselos Digital Twins Contribute to a Bumper Year for Renewables
Akselos was proud to contribute to a significant year for renewable energy through our work in the offshore wind industry. This year, global energy security concerns motivated countries to?turn to renewables to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels . As a result,?global renewable power capacity is expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts (GW) over the next five years .
Digital twin technology aids this required mass deployment of offshore wind by creating leaner, more efficient, innovative designs. This leads to lower costs, shorter timeframes to design and build wind capacity, and therefore increased renewable energy adoption.
For example, we finished the year celebrating a significant milestone, completing the?DigiFloat project ?with Principle Power - the world's first digital twin tailored to floating offshore wind applications. The project is helping the operator reduce the amount of maintenance required and provide valuable, actionable data to reduce asset downtime, lowering the cost of the industry to drive adoption.
This year, we also successfully constructed?a digital twin of offshore wind foundations for Trung Nam Group in Vietnam ?and began building two more: the?TetraSpar floating foundation demonstrator ?and the?Hexicon twin turbine floating wind foundation .
As well as completing several important offshore wind projects, we participated in numerous events to promote our innovative technology. Akselos CEO Thomas Leurent attended two of the world's highest-profile conferences to showcase how Akselos' technology can drive the adoption of offshore wind by creating a?powerful new innovation curve . The first event was CERAWeek - one of the world's premier energy conferences - where he gave a presentation entitled 'How Digital Twins can Help us reach the Net Zero 2050 Goal. '
Finally, Akselos played a prominent role in the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos. Our CEO Thomas Leurent again attended, contributing to several events, and holding bilateral meetings with prominent political and business leaders. After the general meeting, he then wrote two informative articles on his takeaways:
Life Extension of Oil & Gas Assets to Bridge the Gap to Net Zero and Enhance Energy Security
Beyond the mass deployment of renewable energy, a successful transition to net zero will include maintaining and extending the lifespan of ageing oil & gas infrastructure. Undeniably, we will continue to require fossil fuel infrastructure for some time until the energy transition is complete. Thankfully, Akselos' engineering simulation software can improve operations and increase the lifespan of existing assets, avoiding the locking in of future emissions by building new infrastructure.
In 2022, we signed a deal with one of the world's largest gas-to-liquid (GTL) plants. This project will see Akselos digitise multiple assets to improve operational efficiency and increase asset lifespan, significantly reducing the risk of large-scale capacity downtime.
Akselos also entered the European liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector for the first time, building?a digital twin of critical components of a regasification terminal for Adriatic LNG and Bureau Veritas . This will help ease European energy security concerns by increasing operational efficiency, maximising uptime and increasing the flow of natural gas to European consumers.
Finally, in recognition of Akselos' commitment to providing best-in-class technology, the company was awarded the?Best Digital Transformation award at the World Oil Awards ?for our work building a Digital Twin of the?Shell Bonga floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit in Nigeria . Moreover, at the 2022 Latin American Refining Technology Conference, we were a finalist for New Technology Provider for our project building a Digital Twin of coker drums for Pan American Energy.
Looking Forward to 2023
2023 will be another pivotal year in the transition to net zero, with action needed at a faster pace and greater scale than ever before. The pathway to net zero entails the lifespan extension of fossil fuel assets to bridge the gap to a clean energy future and a rapid, extensive deployment of renewable energy. Our?digital twin technology ?can play a critical role in the transition, and we look forward to continuing to play our part in 2023.
This article can also be accessed on our website: https://www.akselos.com/news-detail/akselos-2022-in-review-helping-accelerate-the-transition-to-net-zero