Good morning, everybody, and very, very much welcome to the year-end report from SaltX Technology Holding AB. With me here, I have Harald.
Good morning.
CFO, and myself, Carl-Johan Linér, CEO. We're happy to share some information with you now, and there's gonna be a number of slides, and you have probably seen the release that we did this morning about the year-end report. We will go through those pictures, and you are welcome to put questions in the meantime during the presentation, and we will come to the end of this session where we could talk about these questions and answers. To kick off this information package, I would like to just say a few words about the situation that we do have at the moment on the market.
It's certainly a market that is under a lot of changes and there's a lot of, I think more or less on a daily basis information that are giving to us when it comes to pollution, when it comes to oil prices, when it comes to coal prices, when it comes to emission rights prices, and all those things. Everything taking under consideration, we can be pretty clear on that we are getting towards a fossil-free society. It will take some time maybe, but I think that we don't have any choice. We really have to take some actions. That's the reason why we, SaltX Technology, wake up every morning with a smile and saying that this is this we are doing the right thing. We are making this possible in a way to to.
With our energy storage. There will be a lot of other solutions for sure. We are not the only one that does not say. It's very important that we are one of the enablers that could make this really thing happening. Because I think we have only seen the beginning of this transfer into fossil-free society. Having said that, a few words about SaltX Technology. We are a Stockholm-based company, as you probably know, and we are offering a sustainable technology with a very clear benefit to the customers. Not only to the customers, we're also bringing the benefits to the climate and to the society, as I talked about earlier.
The three cornerstones in SaltX Technology is really that it's a possible technology to scale up. We want to be on the large size on the applications. It's not only a simple solution that you could plug into the wall but we want to be on the very big sizes. To be able to come to the large sizes of the storages, we need to have the best partners that we could find. They're really crucial to make these things happen, that we are cooperating with the key technical partners to take the advantage of the mature technology and bring it together with the new technology as we have. We will have... We have a unique storage solution, and by having that, we create value for-
We are an enabler, as I said, towards a global decarbonization, and we do have a clear roadmap for decarbonization. If we start with the latest news from our company, as you probably have seen, there is a number of press releases during the last week only. There was one press release yesterday, and one before that, day before that. If we start from the left-hand side here on the picture, the Stockholm pilot plant, as we have named it for a very long time, actually is the Bollmora case, Bollmora location at Vattenfall premises in Stockholm. We do have a cooperation, as you know, since Berlin also with Vattenfall, and now we have it together with Vattenfall in Bollmora, and we're very happy to do that because we have...
First of all, it's Vattenfall, but secondly, it's also the case that we have a closeness to our organization here in Stockholm, which means that people from our research and development team could be there very often, and they could test, and they can make some investigation about different things and support installation on a daily basis. We came out with another press release about the Calix charging reactor which seems to be working very well. We will continue with the test with the whole function of charging and charging reactor together with the subsystem that we are planning for now, and we're working with that.
I have seen a number of delays in the material for the reactor side here due to the situation as we do have in the world market. We have managed pretty well to cover up for those delays in deliveries that we have had for especially the electrical part that we are doing this electrical system for control system for the charging reactor and discharging. The middle section on this picture is the collaboration with Alfa Laval. We're pretty happy to announce that two days ago. Like I said, that we have had discussion with Alfa Laval for pretty long time. Now they are and we are ready for this cooperation.
What we're going to do is actually to use the heat exchange technology that they are very good at, and to be able to increase the efficiency, the round-trip efficiency of our complete installation. We have signed this agreement. We have had a couple of workshops, visits all the time. We have been to Bollmora, and they have seen it. I mean, I cannot enough explain how valuable that is that they will see the complete installation by themselves and take their own conclusions where the heat exchange will be possible to install. That would have been more difficult in Berlin. We are very happy with this possibility in Bollmora.
What Alfa Laval has also done, which is really the sort of, say, one of the founders is the LDES Council. It stands for Long Duration Energy Storage Council. This is a pretty new council and association with the producers as well as the users for long duration energy storage applications. We are part of that, and so are many others. This is a very good thing because we will be able to do the marketing and the lobby thing and all to be able to show all the society that this is really a crucial and needed product if we should go into the fossil-free society.
The second, the last one here on the right-hand side is really the press release that we sent out yesterday, and it has to do with the charging reactor. We have for a certain time been working with this innovation, and it's an innovation that we are utilizing a very high temperature, which means that we can also do a higher charging power into our process. This is actually something that is not only on the paper here, I mean, this is something that we have tested, that we have done, and we will take the advantages of doing this, using this in our charging reactor. We are, of course, continue to cooperate with Calix. There's no doubt about that.
There is ongoing discussions together with us how we should do this in the best way. We have a patent. I shouldn't say we have. It's a pending situation about the patent. So we think that this could be a very crucial component in our storage solution. By doing this innovation, we have also seen other possibilities. There is no secret that the industry is looking for some sort of electrification in various fields. We believe it's a bit early maybe to say this, but we strongly believe that we could fill a gap here of technology that could be used. What it actually concretely means, we have to come back with that.
I can't tell you at the moment, but we are going to use this innovation now for the EnerStore charging reactor, and we know that we feel that we could be used in other applications, but we will come back to that. It's all about electrification of the industry. Important milestones. You might have seen this before. I mean, we went public 2016 and 2017. The EnerStore concept was born. In April 2019, we actually opened up the Berlin plant at Vattenfall. Which was a power-to-heat installation. The plan was actually that we should continue with that installation and to make a new shift to another technology that was more suitable to scale up.
The corona situation came along, and we decided that we should go for Stockholm instead. Now we are in Bollmora, as I said, with Vattenfall. We are very pleased with that. We are installing charging reactor and a discharging reactor from Metala Forsveder. We are also not only that, I mean, the energy storage system also consists of various subsystems, which is very important. We're getting to a point now where we actually are optimizing the subsystems as well as the reactor sizes. I think we will get some questions about Luleå, and I can inform you about that situation. We informed you earlier about a possible installation in Luleå. It was a heat-to-heat installation.
We are at the end of a pre-study together with Swerim, which is a steel industry branch organization. Together with them, we are working with this pre-study, and we have actually prolonged the pre-study until we are 100% sure what we are going to do here. It's happening a lot in the industry, especially the steel industry, and they are converting to green steel production in various technologies, and we have to make sure. I think it's my obligations really to secure that we are getting the best value for the money. We will continue, we will finalize this pre-study, and once it's ready, we will of course communicate the results to you.
You can say that so far it's been extremely good because we have increased the discussions and the frequency. We have been showing to Swerim, which is the branch organization, what we can do from a technology point of view, and they have really taken our technology into their heart and say that this is a possible solution that we could use. Exactly where and how, we don't know yet. We hope that we will be able to communicate this in the result of this pre-study at the end of this first quarter. Renewable energy. You have seen this picture before, and it's all about peak shifting. To charge the battery once you have the sort of overcapacity of wind, and to discharge it when you have undercapacity of the renewable.
We know, everyone knows that, once the renewable energy comes up to a high level of the total energy in a region or in a country, the need for storages is increasing. Once you get up to a 50%, 60% of renewable energy, you need about one-fifth or 20% in storages. That is the rule of thumb that everyone knows about. The energy storages could be, of course, of various technology and various applications and so on, but we think that we could be one of them, one of the supplier in the on those storages applications. Where are we? What arena do we have?
Well, we think that when it comes to the capacity, we, as I said, since we have working towards a scalable technology, we want to scale it up to a capacity of more than 10 MWh and upwards. There is of course a limit upwards, but we think it, we see it as between, well, slightly below 10 GWh. It's all depending on the material, how much material we do have. Then the storage time can vary between days and weeks and months, really. That's our unique advantages, where we can have long storages. Thereby, as you see that there are other technologies and so it's we are filling this place here. That's our arena. We've been working with three different applications under development. We have the heat-to-heat.
We have the power-to-steam. We have the power-to-power. Power-to-power is very often equal to the lithium-ion battery, and it's a good technology, but once it's getting up to big, large sizes, it's getting out of hand in cost. Extremely expensive. The heat-to-heat is also interesting, of course, but we have chosen now to really focus on the power-to-steam application. Berlin was that, Bollmora is that, and all the discussions we have with our partners and with our customers and possible customers, we talk power-to-steam. You can also. Not many people know about this, but actually 49%, almost 50% of all global energy is consumed as steam.
This is also, on the negative side, of course, when it comes to the global emission. 43% of all global emission comes from steam and heat, but that we are going to change on. One of the way of changing it is the next page where we will talk about renewable steam on demand. What we see on the bottom here of the picture is the situation today where you're transporting oil or by truck or shipment, or you have pipelines with coal, and you put it into a fossil fuel tank, the storage of the tank. Then, once you need the steam, you put the burner on and you are generating CO2 emission, of course, and but you're also generating the steam by this burner.
The emission rights are getting sky high at the moment, as I maybe said, in EUR 90 per ton CO2, and it's getting expensive for the industry to make this production here. Not only that they are getting a lot of bad wind because of the CO2 emission, but it's also cost-wise bad for them. The customers and the supplier of this of this of the equipment is now looking into how can we change this. How can we take away the emission of CO2? It starts with, of course, with a with a renewable sourcing of energy, solar, wind, and by the electrical grid, which we will then heat up the heat up the the the the the material, but we can use, we can have different alternatives here, heating alternatives. You can use heat pump.
You can use resistive solution. Resistive is comparable with our solution that we have in Bollmora with a Calix solution. Plasma is another possible technology, and there are a number of others. Then we're going to do a storage of heat, and once you need the storage, you will use it in the processes. Renewable steam on demand. This is a very clear and application, and it's getting advantages directly if you're going, if you could do this change. It's, how shall I say it? It's in the hands of the industry itself. They can choose themselves here. By doing this, you eliminate the high cost, but you also eliminate the emission of CO2.
The platform that we do have at the moment, power to heat, is a charging reactor. That's the tallest one. On the picture here is the Calix reactor. The discharging reactor is actually the Sumitomo SHI FW reactor. We have made a common design of that one. Then we have the material itself. It is produced by Nordkalk and WACKER. As recently was announced, Alfa Laval is also a very important partner to us, and ABB is also a very important partner to us when it comes to electrical and control systems. I would like to say that it's a very strong partner team as we do have here.
I know by myself, I've been sitting on the other side looking at the smaller companies and them coming up with new innovations and all those new ideas that certainly not all of them that it's creating interest on the big company side. We have had the discussion with Alfa Laval for a long time, and we have had the discussion with ABB for a long time and some other partners also. We know that we have been able to create some interest, and we have been able to show them that we have something that they could build on. Also very important, of course, is that the technology we have is actually sort of part of their strategy in the long run. They want to be part
They realize that the energy storage market is very, very important in the future. They have also seen, I think that we have the drive and we have the competence in our organization to sort of create a win situation for them. By doing that, we also create a win situation for us. I'm very pleased with this partner team as we do have today. It's a strong team. We are also developing the subsystem between those various components as we do have in a good way. We are on our way to a pre-commercial installation. Which this picture also shows you that we are between development phase and commercial phase.
What we mean by pre-commercial is actually that the customer is taking a more financial role in the storage application. That could of course vary when it comes to amount of money or other manpower or other equipment supplier or whatever. It's also important that we keep on searching for soft money. There is a lot of soft money both in Sweden and the EU. We have a finger on that one, and we're following that one. It's a bit bureaucratic maybe to do those applications, but we think that we could use a little bit of copy and paste in various applications that we do have.
We see that we are creating interest and we build competence in our organization also and with value. We are heading towards this commercial phase. Before we go into 100% commercial, we think the plan is that we will have a pre-commercial situation. Harald, what do you say?
Thank you.
Your turn.
I'll keep it rather short. Carl-Johan have mentioned it already, how we try to make the most out of our financial resources by combining them with contributions from public sources, both Swedish and international. We have been successful in that in the past, and we will continue to do efforts to apply for that. That's what's already ongoing. In combination, we also refer to the support given by our partners in different kinds. As we're getting further and further in our development and in validating and verifying our technology, we will get further support and also obtain customers and partners who will actually participate in mounting the pilots and the pre-commercial facilities that we plan to present. That's all really what I wanted to say on our financials.
Okay. Thank you very much. We're heading into the questions and hopefully answers also. The first question comes from Andreas. Will you try to communicate, do marketing more, and in that way, start building the brand SaltX? First of all, I would like to say that we have a pretty strong brand, SaltX. We see that when we are getting, when we get searching for new people, et cetera, with the people and the competent people that are approaching us. Yes, we will put in the next gear, so to say, in the communication for sure, and you will see that in the near future. We have employed some people also to be able to do this.
I sincerely hope that, and I trust that you will see a change of this branding.
How much money is left is the next question, and I refer, of course, back to the financial statement. We had at the end of the year GBP 51 million, and that's slightly better than what we had at the beginning of last year. In between, of course, we have spent money on our organization and on our pilot, as well as that we did an issue in May of last year. What is expected for this year, we won't comment going forward. An issue today when we look at the share itself is that people don't trust SaltX as a company anymore. I thought the best potential to get it more users is to out-
Outside of Sweden.
Outside of Sweden. It will also make it easy for SaltX to do a new admission.
We can only say thank you.
What do you say about that?
Yes, we just thank you. We will take that to our heart and see what we will do with that suggestion.
Mm-hmm.
How do we w ork on plan to do the? We work on a plan to do that in the future. Yeah, we already commented on that- that we are strengthening including in the next year, our marketing including of course, our investor relations.
The best way with our investor relations is of course to explain what we do, and explain results we achieve, and obtain results and present them. Just the last week, Carl-Johan has commented that on the press releases we that we have sent out to the market. Those are very important steps and very important tools for communicating with the market, as is this presentation of our year-end report.
It is an important issue. And once as I kicked off this meeting, it is a changing world, and there are a lot of things happening out there. We need to be out there. We need to be seen as an enabler, as we are, and we need to work on this one. I think that will close the meeting. We don't have any more questions. Do you have any additional comments, Harald?
No, I'm fine.
And again, thank you very much for joining. Thanl you, and we will talk again soon. Bye-bye. Have a nice day and weekend. Thank you so much.