The Largest Solar Thermal Plant in Europe and More - July Solutions Update

The largest solar thermal plant in Spain to reduce Heineken España's natural gas consumption, a consortium to advance circularity in the textile industry, successful closing rounds and more. Discover the latest news on Solar Impulse clean and efficient Labeled Solutions.

AZTEQ and ENGIE España to build a large-scale solar thermal plant in Spain

The new solar thermal plant will be installed and commissioned within the land of Heineken España’s brewery. Financing is done by ENGIE España who will operate and maintain the solar plant. AZTEQ was chosen as main EPC contractor by ENGIE España and will engineer and construct the solar plant based on factual heat requirements of the local brewery of Heineken in Seville. In return, Heineken España will use all the renewable solar heat produced by AZTEQ’s installation to replace fossil fuelled heat for a period of 20 years by means of a long term PPA agreement with partner ENGIE España in Spain. AZTEQ’s Labeled Solution provided to Heineken is one of its kind and up to now has not been rolled out on such a large scale into the food industry for temperatures above 100°C. Thanks to AZTEQ’s solution, Heineken España will be able to reduce their yearly natural gas consumption by 60% as well as their carbon footprint by saving approximately 7000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

Carbios has signed an agreement with On, Patagonia, PUMA, and Salomon, to develop solutions that will enhance the recyclability and circularity of their products. An important element of the two-year deal will be to speed up the introduction of Carbios’ unique biorecycling technology, which constitutes a breakthrough for the textile industry. The challenge the four brands share is that their sustainable development goals can only partially be met by conventional recycling technologies which mostly target bottle-to-fiber recycling. Yet the market consensus is that there will soon be a shortage of PET bottles, as they will be used for circular production methods in the Food & Beverage Industry. Carbios’ biorecycling process uses an enzyme capable of selectively extracting the polyester, recovering it to recreate a virgin fiber. This revolutionary technology makes it possible to recover the PET polyester present in all textile waste that cannot be recycled using traditional technologies. By creating a circular economy from used plastics and fibers, Carbios’ biorecycling technology offers a potential saving of 30% CO2 emissions compared to a conventional end-of-life for PET waste not treated by mechanical recycling (mix of in incineration and landfill).

UBQ™ material piloted within PepsiCo's value chain 

PepsiCo, one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, aligned with its strategic transformation, PepsiCo Positive (pep+), which puts sustainability at the heart of the business, and with the global goal of achieving Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2040, announces use of the Labeled Solution UBQ™ material. The material, developed by the Israeli startup of the same name, will be used in the creation of a sustainable pallet that includes unsorted household waste – including organics – in its composition. In this initial project alone, the material implementation saves the equivalent of more than 6,500 kg of GHG emissions – the equivalent of the annual carbon sequestration of 534 trees. UBQ™ material had the chance to trial its solution within PepsiCo’s value chain, and opportunities will be identified for scaling applications up in 2023 and beyond.

Hipli adopted by Balzac Paris

The Labeled Solution Hipli is a parcel designed to be reused 100 times. Hipli reusable packages are offered as an option on Balzac Paris’ site to leave the choice to their customers. Upon receipt, the clients discover their purchases and fold the package following the instructions on the back, they then mail for free the Hipli enveloppe. Hipli parcels are light and fold into a mail format to limit the environmental impact of the postal return: a postal journey between Tours and Le Havre emits 20g of CO2, which is the average impact of sending an e-mail. HIPLI parcels have a lower environmental impact than cardboard parcels, even with a 100% recycled content: -83% of the carbon footprint for the large format for example.

Water recycling system Hydraloop wins prestigious UN award

Following on last month news featuring Hydraloop's nomination at the first ever WIPO Global Awards, the news came down on July 19: The agency of the United Nations, has chosen Hydraloop as winner of the WIPO Global Awards Program!  WIPO's Global Awards program praises Hydraloop as an exceptional company that uses its intellectual property (IP) in an innovative and smart way to help solve the water crisis and improve the quality of life worldwide. WIPO's program recognizes the central role of innovative and creative activities of SMEs that leverage intellectual property rights to develop solutions that make a positive contribution, economically, socially and culturally. The prize is awarded based on successful commercialization of IP and its positive impact on society. Hydraloop is a multi-award-winning company that designs and manufactures decentralized, consumer-friendly, IoT-connected, compact and scalable graywater recycling products for residential and commercial properties, reducing water consumption by up to 45 percent.

Cortexia - A bicycle to map waste in Lausanne 

In its constant quest to improve its services, the City of Lausanne, Switzerland has decided to conduct an analysis of the state of cleanliness of its entire territory with the help of an electric bicycle equipped with Cortexia's Labeled Solution, a technology capable of detecting the nature and quantity of waste on the ground. Thanks to the information obtained, the City will be able to map the state of cleanliness in Lausanne and optimize services as closely as possible to the real needs of the population. The specialized company with which the City is working on this project has already made it possible to implement the same process in other cities in Switzerland and abroad. Cortexia is committed to support cities in managing their sanitation department, by providing an accurate and real time monitoring of urban cleanliness. 

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SlideLuvre winner of the CapitaLand Sustainability x Challenge 2022       

CapitaLand has awarded 10 startups from its CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge 2022 (CSXC) to testbed their innovations at selected CapitaLand properties worldwide, following their final pitches made at CSXC’s Demo Day held today. CapitaLand’s S$50 million Innovation Fund was launched at the grand finale of the inaugural CSXC in June 2021 to support the testbedding of green and proptech innovations over a five-year period. Slide Luvre’s Labeld Solution, Smart Voltaic Louvres, dramatically reduce building energy dependency on external sources by generating solar energy and saves energy by reducing cooling and artificial lighting needs. It significantly reduces peak daily and seasonal demand loads and can also be used in tandem with rooftop solar to improve early morning and late afternoon generation profiles. Energy-efficiency savings of up to 50% can be achieved, and it produces up to 80% of rooftop solar energy.

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Closed Funding Rounds 

EcoTree raises €12 million 

French B-Corp greentech EcoTree raises €12 million to help its journey toward becoming the leading European Nature-Based Solutions provider. EcoTree welcomes investment from new partners Société Générale Ventures, Financière, Fonds Privés and Famae Impact. Its historical shareholders, the Accurafy fund and Epopée Gestion, are renewing the confidence by respectively reinvesting and remaining actively in the capital, while the seed investors Finistère Angels are exiting. EcoTree will use this funding to further establish their presence in France, Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Belgium & the Netherlands, Increase their impact by making Nature-Based Solutions accessible to as many people as possible and Develop new projects for the forest and biodiversity. EcoTree has initiated a revolution in the "green" investments field by digitalizing and democratizing investments in tree planting, which results in a concrete compensation of CO2 footprint and preservation of biodiversity. 

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BeeBryte raises US$11.5 million 

Energy efficiency specialist BeeBryte has raised S$11.5 million (€8.2 million) to finance its rapid growth in Europe and Asia and to continue developing its patented predictive control solution for industrial cooling and heating systems. This second round of funding marks EREN Groupe’s acquisition of a 25% stake in the company as a strategic partner. The company’s founders, Compagnie Nationale du Rhône (CNR), and other longstanding individual shareholders are also reinvesting. BeeBryte’s Labeled Solution, Hive Optimal, is a software solution that allows for automatic and real time optimisation of various refrigeration systems equipment (chillers, pumps, evaporators, etc.) to make it more energy efficient. This can reduce electricity costs by up to 40%.

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