Cooperation agreement with Sweco

2019-05-29

Absolicon and Sweco’s energy operations have entered into a cooperation agreement to jointly explore opportunities to power industries and district heating networks with large-scale solar heat and solar energy.

The agreement means that Absolicon and Sweco will jointly make technical evaluations of concrete projects. The goal is to create long-term cooperation that benefits both parties. The agreement means no exclusivity.

A successful collaboration means for Absolicon that energy customers such as industries and cities want Absolicon’s concentrating solar collectors to replace combustion of fuels and that it results in players choosing to invest in regional production lines.

The collaboration is organized around two concrete projects – the tea industry in Rwanda and district heating in Eastern Europe.

In Rwanda, the tea industry has a big challenge in how they can handle their heat supply to dry the tea leaves. Here there are great similarities with the project Absolicon is conducting in Kenya with Nordic Climate Fund. Oil costs are high in Africa and biofuels such as eucalyptus are problematic. However, Rwanda is a small country and our view is that the needs of the tea industry in Rwanda could result in 100 MW solar collectors.

In the case of district heating in Eastern Europe, it can be expected that tougher environmental and climate requirements will require reduced combustion of coal in the same way as in e.g. Germany. One possible development is that solar heat receives a 50% investment support. The temperatures in the networks are high, which means that ordinary flat solar collectors are less suitable than Absolicon’s T160

Sweco is the leading consulting company in technology and architecture in Europe with 16,000 employees and a turnover of approximately SEK 18.7 billion.