How Source Global Is Democratizing Access To Safe Drinking Water

Residential Hydropanel R3 | SOURCE GLOBAL

SOURCE Global was founded out of the desire to tackle one of humanity’s biggest challenges: access to clean drinking water. It’s the world’s first renewable drinking water system that is clean, safe, made entirely off-grid, usable almost anywhere in the world.

According to the United Nations, across the globe, more than 2 billion people live without safely managed drinking water services. Across the U.S., the NIH has shown that half of all tap water is contaminated with PFAS, otherwise known as ‘forever chemicals’. 

This sobering reality ignited the spark for Dr. Cody Friesen, the visionary founder, and CEO of SOURCE Global, PBC. Driven by an unwavering commitment to employing cutting-edge technology for solving humanity's most critical issues, Dr. Friesen embarked on a path to revolutionize the way we address these pressing challenges - with the latest innovation in their game-changing R3 model.

During our conversation, Dr. Friesen shared his journey, “I have been in the renewable energy space for the better part of two decades and I’ve always been driven to solve challenges that are both global in scope and profoundly personal.”

Dr. Cody Friesen, Founder and CEO of SOURCE Global | SOURCE GLOBAL

Despite alarming statistics, it’s tempting to think about drinking water access as somebody else’s problem. After all, for most of us, when we turn on the faucet, clean, fresh water is at our disposal. 

However, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, in the U.S. there’s a water main break every two minutes, and an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water is lost each day. “When the inefficiency of aging infrastructure is combined with anthropogenic changes to our climate and the socioeconomic factors that limit the ability of so many people to access safe, clean drinking water, the urgency of this challenge is unmistakable,” Dr. Friesen explained. 

The solution he envisioned required transcending conventional approaches. “It became clear that what was needed was a solution that avoids groundwater, avoids aging infrastructure, and most importantly, avoids band-aiding failed approaches of the past,” Friesen added.

By harnessing the power of sunlight and renewable energy, he aimed to make clean drinking water a universally accessible resource. Much like solar panels generate electricity, Dr. Friesen wondered if a technology could exist to produce drinking water anywhere, without relying on groundwater or outdated infrastructure. This vision materialized into the remarkable SOURCE Hydropanels.

Drinking water challenges are not a problem ‘over there,’ they exist in every home and for every single life. SOURCE Global's overarching mission is ‘to perfect water for every person, in every place’. . Dr. Friesen drew a poignant parallel between air and water, “For a moment, let’s compare the fundamental nature of air and water. To own the air you breathe, you simply take a breath, independent of where you are, and how much money you have, it’s intrinsic to your life, it’s fundamental. As is the water you drink. However, unlike air, you’re either lucky enough for the government to provide you with potable water, or you go to the store and buy it. It’s still fundamental to your life, but it’s anything but intrinsic.”

Ultimately, Source Global aims to close that gap. What Hydropanels do is democratize drinking water by producing it from the air wherever they are placed, decoupling geography and the existing resource from safe drinking water access. This intrinsically loving act, democratizing drinking water, permeates everything Source Global does as a company. 

SOURCE Installation, Palawan, Philippines | SOURCE GLOBAL

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 3.4 million people die from water-related diseases every year, making it the leading cause of disease and death around the world. Put another way, one person dies on this planet from a waterborne illness every 10 seconds. That’s about the amount of time it takes to put on a pair of socks. Hard to imagine in 2023.

“One could address this problem by solving all the drivers of waterborne illness: cholera in rivers, pathogens in municipal water, parasites in groundwater, etc. The list is long and the challenges, just like those associated with water infrastructure, are complicated. I believe we’ve only been going backward in this regard,” Dr. Friesen discussed. 

“Alternatively, if we can democratize drinking water broadly, by making Hydropanels completely ubiquitous, the number of seconds between someone dying from waterborne illness can, potentially, become infinite,” he aspired. 

SOURCE Hydropanels stand as a groundbreaking departure from prior solutions. From the start of the R&D that ultimately became Hydropanels, the top-level goals have been to make drinking water an unlimited resource on-site, at any site, anywhere in the world. That means that the technology must work off-grid, without a piped input, and across a huge range of relative humidity and temperature profiles. And that set of constraints drove what is ultimately an elegant solution.

“We developed a set of engineered hygroscopic materials that pull water vapor from the air and concentrate it, then expose those materials to sunlight, respiring the water vapor inside the flow paths of the Hydropanel. That concentrated vapor stream then has a much higher dew point than ambient, and we have a few layers of additional technology that ensure that’s true, which then leads to passive condensation within the Hydropanel,” Dr. Friesen explained. 

“Because of that approach, the resulting liquid water has a composition like that of distilled water, and we then mineralize, ozonate, and store that now perfect water for delivery to a tap. It’s the best water you’ve ever had in your life,” he claimed.

Source Global have now come out with their game-changing R3 innovation. It extends what SOURCE Global developed with the SOURCE Hydropanel enabling the provision of high-quality, safe drinking water essentially anywhere on the planet. Now, with R3, it has a version that is readily shippable and installable by the U.S. consumer.

The R3 allows consumers to take control of the most important water in the world — the water they put into their bodies. “If you think about it, we’re still approaching water as the Romans did: we wait for it to rain and move the resulting water from its origin point through vast infrastructure to where we need it. Now, consumers can produce water when and where they need it without the hassle, risk, or expense of existing approaches,” Dr. Friesen added. 

Source Hydropanel on Navajo nation | SOURCE GLOBAL

SOURCE Global's transformative influence extends across the world, touching the lives of communities far and wide. 

The burden of water collection, which disproportionately falls upon women and children, is a challenge that SOURCE is actively addressing. UNICEF reports that women worldwide collectively spend a staggering 200 million hours each day fetching water, diverting their time and energy from other essential pursuits such as education.

Whether we’re talking about the more than 500 homes on the Navajo Nation, or the homes across indigenous lands in Australia that have Hydropanels, or the villages and schools in the Eastern Cape of South Africa who, because of Hydropanels, have access to safe, clean drinking water, social impact is in the company’s DNA. 

This dedication to social change isn't just part of SOURCE's mission; it's woven into the fabric of its corporate structure and culture. “We are a Public Benefit Corporation investing our time and talent to solve drinking water scarcity globally. In our team and within our business, there is no tension between mission and money. Our democratizing technology advances people in every geography and at every economic station. This advancement allows us to produce our product at an ever-lower cost and thus, serve even more people,” Dr. Friesen elaborated. 

Dr. Friesen recounted the moments of the impact, “Seeing the reaction of a woman who is used to spending hours a day fetching water, drink our water from a tap in her home for the first time, never gets old. And when we install an array at a school that hasn’t had potable water, it drives home the importance of our vision.”

Purity of purpose, the unswerving commitment to making a difference, the joy of a child experiencing clean water, and the broader environmental impact of reducing plastic waste all underscore the immense worthiness of SOURCE Global's transformative endeavor.