COWI AB

Their core work

COWI AB is the Swedish arm of the COWI Group, a major Nordic engineering and consulting firm specializing in infrastructure, environment, and energy projects. In their H2020 participation, they contribute applied engineering expertise to energy systems — specifically carbon capture technology and low-temperature district heating. Their work bridges laboratory-scale research and real-world implementation, making them a practical engineering partner in multi-disciplinary research consortia. They bring industrial relevance and technical assessment capabilities to projects that need engineering validation alongside academic research.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their two projects run nearly concurrently (2016 and 2017 starts), so a clean timeline shift is hard to establish. The first project (ROLINCAP) sits in industrial process engineering — rotating packed beds and CO2 capture solvents — with no tagged keywords, suggesting a more peripheral or technical-support role. The second project (COOL DH) is where their identity becomes clear: district heating, renewable energy integration, and energy efficiency in urban systems. The trajectory points away from point-source industrial emissions and toward systemic urban energy infrastructure.

COWI AB appears to be moving toward urban energy systems consulting — district heating networks, low-grade heat recovery, and local renewable integration — which aligns with the broader Scandinavian push toward decarbonizing heating infrastructure.

How they like to work

COWI AB has participated exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator, across both H2020 projects. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 22 unique consortium partners across 7 countries, indicating involvement in large, multi-partner consortia rather than small focused teams. This pattern is consistent with a large engineering consultancy that joins consortia to provide technical validation, engineering assessment, or real-world deployment context rather than leading the research agenda.

COWI AB has connected with 22 unique partners across 7 countries through just two projects, reflecting the large consortium sizes typical of H2020 RIA and IA instruments. Their network skews Nordic and Northern European, consistent with the geographic focus of district heating and cold-climate energy research.

What sets them apart

COWI AB brings the weight of a major pan-European engineering consultancy to research projects — they are not a university group producing papers, but a firm that can ground research in real infrastructure constraints and implementation pathways. For consortia working on district heating or urban energy systems in Sweden and the Nordic region, COWI AB offers direct access to engineering practice and established client networks in municipalities and energy utilities. Their dual exposure to both carbon capture chemistry and heat network engineering makes them an unusual bridge between industrial decarbonization and urban energy infrastructure.

Highlights from their portfolio

• COOL DH
  A 5-year Innovation Action (2017-2022) tackling low-temperature district heating using surplus cooling heat — a highly practical decarbonization pathway for European cities, with strong keyword coverage confirming COWI AB's active technical contribution.
• ROLINCAP
  The larger-funded project (€160,000 EC contribution) focused on rotating packed bed CO2 capture — an advanced industrial process engineering topic that shows COWI AB's range beyond heat networks into post-combustion carbon capture.