These electric submarines map the seafloor to make way for wind power
In March, the departments of Energy, Interior and Commerce said they were aiming for U.S. offshore wind capacity to hit 30 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, a hugely optimistic goal that would require thousands of new wind turbines to be installed off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts.

With federal support locked in, now it's up to developers and operators to figure out where it's safe to install offshore wind farms and pursue permits.

Bedrock, a Richmond, California, start-up, wants to help them map the seafloor using electric autonomous underwater vehicles (e-AUV) that can launch right from the shore.

Traditionally, marine surveys would require a large, crewed ship and heavy sonar equipment that would generate terabytes of data stored on hard drives that had to be mailed somewhere for processing and analysis.

Marine surveys like that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take up to a full year, says Bedrock co-founder and CEO Anthony DiMare.

By contrast his company's electric mini sub gathers data using lighter-weight sonar and other sensors, then transmits it to Bedrock's cloud-based service. The company's Mosaic software makes it usable almost right away from a work PC.

Bedrock's electric submarines run on a lithium-ion battery that can be swapped out for a freshly charged one when needed. They run for 12- or 24-hour missions, typically at a speed of 2 to 3 knots (or less than 5 mph) to conduct surveys up to 300 meters in depth.

Bedrock was co-founded in 2019 by DiMare, a repeat entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, along with CTO Charlie Chiau, a former SpaceX systems integration engineer.

They told CNBC the company is focused on the needs of the domestic offshore wind industry right now, further motivated by the urgency of the IPCC report earlier this month.

However, Bedrock's seafloor mapping technology can be put to use in many other industries. For example, it can find aging oil and gas infrastructure that may need to be decommissioned. It can also be used for data center planning underwater.