Interreg funds project to develop Sea Water Air Conditioning solution

Experts from across academia and industry will create a Sea Water Air Conditioning system (SWAC) to help reduce CO2 emissions and energy costs, thanks to Interreg funding. 

Project EUROSWAC will adapt technology, which to date has been mainly used at a few sites in tropical areas, and in the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel’s seawater.

It is expected that continental SWAC can bring major benefits in terms of the reduction of CO2 emissions, land use, operation costs and end-users’ energy consumption and bills.

EUROSWAC will run for three years and has a total budget of €20.5M, of which €8.9M is funded from the European Regional Development Fund via the Interreg France (Channel) England Programme (FCE).

The partnership, led by Électricité de France (EDF) has 7 partners mainly from Northern France and 4 partners from Southern England and will design a cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly prototype solution for cooling production, using seawater, a renewable energy source as refrigerant and will exploit the temperature difference between cold ocean water and external air temperature.

The partnership also aims to develop methods to reduce implementation costs and optimize adaptation to different sites to promote the development of the solution in the FCE area. The deployment of 35 SWAC is considered by 2030, creating 250 jobs, attracting €85 million of investment and reducing indirect CO2 emissions caused by air conditioning by 30%.

Interested about the project? Get to know more by clicking here.