Born from a desire to combat some of the largest obstacles that exist for modern-day wave pools, Laurent [Hequily]’s artificial wave brainchild, the Okahina Wave, is the first of its kind to specifically target both the environmental and economic costs that come with creating a surf park.
An environmentally positive wave pool – as in, one that improves the environment in some capacity – sounds a bit like an oxymoron. It’s well known that to create a wave pool, developers usually need to have massive quantities of land, water, energy, and in most cases, concrete.
Already patented in 44 countries (including the U.S.) and developed by a French based company called Waveriding Solution, Laurent’s project sets out to be the world’s first environmentally positive, cost-effective and energy efficient wave generating technology on the market thus far. In fact, because Laurent’s artificial wave does not exist in a concrete environment, he prefers you don’t refer to his project as a wave pool at all.
The Okahina Wave concept is truly innovative. While there have been no commercial-scale prototypes to date, the proof of concept has already garnered interest from investors, the European Union, nonprofits, and developers. “Today, in France and Europe in general, all the project holders and investors are very careful of the type of project they’re investing in, especially on the environmental side of it,” says Laurent. “They decided to invest in the Okahina Wave because of our environmental design and a real care about our carbon, environmental and biodiversity footprint. That’s some of the main criteria for investments right now.”
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Katie Rodriguez
Surf Park Central, 29 juin 2021