Future Technology Took EIC Accelerator Money for a Subsea Cooler

Every high-voltage converter platform in an offshore wind farm has to get rid of heat, and the usual way is to pump seawater up to the platform, filter it, treat it with chlorine and run it through heat exchangers. Future Technology AS, an engineering firm from Sandefjord in southern Norway, proposed to leave the seawater where it is. Its FSCC cooler, short for Future Subsea Controllable Cooler, sits on the seabed, and the platform's own cooling water flows down to it and back in a closed loop, with no seawater pumps and no chlorination, according to CORDIS.

In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 3 April 2019, the European Commission selected the project, COOLWIND, and the EU committed €2,499,999 of its €3,575,000 cost. The company is the only beneficiary listed for COOLWIND in the Commission's list of April 2019 winners. The goal, the company wrote at the time, was "to have a subsea cooler unit installed and operating on a live HVDC platform as a pilot". The project ended in September 2023 without one. In March 2026 the Swedish engineering group Rejlers agreed to buy the company, which by then sold engineering, safety and project management consulting.

A Consultancy Now Inside Rejlers

On 18 March 2026 Rejlers announced that it had agreed to buy all the shares in Future Technology, a company with 72 employees and 2025 sales of NOK 119 million, to be consolidated from 1 April 2026, according to the group's release, also published by Inderes. The release describes a firm with expertise in "electrical engineering, power systems, technical safety, project management, risk and safety services" and does not mention the cooler. The purchase price was not disclosed. Marianne Ask stays on as chief executive.

The Brønnøysund Register Centre confirms the change of hands: on 2 June 2026 the company was renamed Future Technology - Part of Rejlers AS, and Ragnar Holtan, who runs Rejlers Norway, is now chairman. The company's website lists power systems, safety and project management services and references for clients such as Bane NOR, Aker Solutions and Aibel. Neither the subsea cooler nor COOLWIND appears on it.

The Technology: Letting the Sea Do the Cooling

On a converter platform of a wind farm that sends power to shore as high-voltage direct current (HVDC), the converters produce heat that has to be removed around the clock. The standard solution, as COOLWIND's proposal describes it, pumps seawater up to the platform with electric pumps and passes it through heat exchangers. The pumps use power, particles in the water clog the filters, and the water has to be chlorinated against marine growth.

The FSCC turns this around. The platform's fresh cooling water is piped down to a cooler frame on the seabed, gives off its heat to the surrounding sea and returns. The CORDIS summary lists the benefits as "no seawater pumps, no filters, no heat exchanger with seawater cooling medium, no expensive salt water piping, no chlorination", and estimated savings of up to 3 GWh and €1 million a year per platform. These are the company's estimates, and no operator has published figures from a working unit.

The idea was not new to the company when it applied. In January 2019, the Norwegian engineering weekly TU reported that a prototype had been tested in the sea for two and a half years near Aibel's yard in Haugesund from the winter of 2016, with Lundin Norway as the main industrial partner, and that about NOK 40 million had gone into the technology over ten years. COOLWIND's final report describes a 6-tonne cooler tested "offshore", with results within 5% of the company's design software, SIMCOOL. In December 2022 the company was granted US patent 11525639 for the pipe supports in its cooler frame, which let the piping expand with heat without wearing its corrosion protection.

What COOLWIND Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

COOLWIND ran for 48 months, from 1 October 2019 to 30 September 2023. The proposal set out to industrialise the FSCC "from current TRL6 to TRL9", the last stage of technology readiness, meaning a system proven in operation, and said two operators had already signed letters of intent. The company's own announcement made the target concrete: a pilot cooler on a working HVDC platform.

The final report lists a large body of engineering work: flow and CFD analysis, materials and strength calculations, installation analyses, a design for large cooler modules, a full HVDC and hydrogen platform cooling system with its topside piping and controls, tests of anti-fouling materials, and an upgraded SIMCOOL that includes ocean current data. It claims the project verified the product to TRL8. It also states the central setback plainly: "One of Europe's major offshore wind developers placed an order for a single system, but due to schedule impacts of non-FSCC related problems, the order was unfortunately cancelled." The report does not name the developer, and no installed unit, pilot or sale is reported there or anywhere else in public.

1. Pilot cooler on a live HVDC platformNot achievedThe only order was cancelled; no installation is reported in the final report.
2. From TRL6 to TRL9Not achievedThe report claims TRL8; TRL9 requires a system proven in operation, which never happened.
3. Full-scale cooler and system designDeliveredDesign documents, 3D model and a complete platform cooling system design, per CORDIS.
4. Anti-fouling validationReportedStudies and tests are described in the report; no results are published.
5. Market entry with offshore operatorsNot achievedNo customer, sale or installation has been announced since 2023.

The project was a single-company grant. The EU paid 70% of the budget, and COOLWIND kept its full 48-month schedule. CORDIS lists no other EU project for the company. Because the award was grant only, it carried no EIC equity.

What Happened to the Cooler

While the project was still running, the company announced on its website that the cooler was "hotter than ever" and was getting its own site, subsea-cooler.com, according to an archived copy of the post, dated 17 December without a year; the Internet Archive first recorded the new domain in December 2021. That domain did not respond when checked for this article in October 2026. The company's current website no longer lists a cooler department, and the Rejlers release describes the business without it. Whether the FSCC rights are still held by the company, were sold, or have been shelved could not be verified.

The Money: Growth From Consulting

The company that won the grant was never a single-product start-up. Its 2019 proposal already described "a strong team of 32 experts" from offshore energy projects. Since then it has grown as a consultancy. Annual accounts filed with the Brønnøysund register show operating revenue of NOK 89.4 million in 2023, NOK 109.6 million in 2024 and NOK 119.1 million in 2025, with an operating profit of NOK 13.7 million in the last year; Purehelp gives the same 2025 figures, and Rejlers' release gives 2025 sales of NOK 119 million. Headcount rose from 32 to 72, according to Rejlers, while the register lists 68 employees as of August 2026.

Why Europe Should Care

In November 2020, a year into COOLWIND, the Commission adopted its Strategy for Offshore Renewable Energy, which aims to raise Europe's offshore wind capacity from about 12 GW to at least 60 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050, according to summaries by McCann FitzGerald and the Polish Institute of International Affairs. Much of that power will reach shore through HVDC converter platforms far out at sea, each of which needs cooling. A closed-loop cooler that cut pumping power, maintenance and chlorine releases would serve both the strategy's growth target and its demand that projects protect marine biodiversity.

The record shows the gap between a good engineering case and a first sale. A first installation needs an operator willing to put a new cooling system on a live converter platform, and COOLWIND's one buyer pulled out for reasons the company says had nothing to do with the cooler. The grant paid for a design that is, by the company's own account, one step short of operation, and nobody has taken that step in public.

The Verdict

Future Technology and Rejlers have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.