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Solvatten – Safe Hot Water, Powered by the Sun
Lead Organization: David Wadström
Country: Sweden (Stockholm)
Category Award: Water Finalist
Year: 2026
Sunlight Is Delivering Safe Water, Health & Freedom to Hundreds of Thousands
In many low-income and displaced communities, water has never simply been water. It has meant long walks under a scorching sun. It has meant collecting from broken pumps, muddy rivers, and shallow wells. It has meant boiling water over smoky fires inside small homes, breathing in fumes that quietly damage lungs and shorten lives.For women and children, the burden has been especially heavy. Hours each day are spent gathering water and firewood. Smoke fills kitchens. Illness spreads easily through contaminated water. Climate change makes everything worse—drying up wells, extending distances, and increasing pressure on already fragile forests. Safe water should not require smoke, sickness, and exhaustion.
Harnessing the Power of the Sun
In 2013, Solvatten, founded by David Wadström, introduced a solution as simple as it is transformative: safe hot water powered entirely by sunlight. Solvatten is a portable, solar-powered water treatment system designed in the form of durable black jerrycans. Using the sun’s UV rays and thermal heat, it purifies and heats contaminated water in just a few hours… without fuel, chemicals, electricity, or infrastructure. What once required firewood and smoke now requires only sunlight.
Each unit provides safe water for drinking, cooking, washing hands, and preparing food, meeting essential daily household needs. The design is durable and built to last for years, eliminating recurring costs and reducing reliance on single-use plastics. Distribution happens through trusted networks including schools, clinics, refugee settlements, NGOs, and organizations such as UNHCR, PLAN International, ChildFund, the Red Cross, Rotary, and local partners. Households are trained to use the system effectively and to share knowledge within their communities, accelerating adoption through local ownership. It is not just a product. It is a shift in daily life.
Transforming Health, Time & the Environment
The impact has been remarkable. Approximately 140,000 households—around 770,000 people—now use Solvatten daily. Each unit provides approximately 42,000 litres of safe water over its lifetime.Waterborne diseases have declined. Cases of diarrhoea and other preventable illnesses have been reduced. Children attend school more consistently because they are healthier. Indoor air pollution has dropped as families no longer burn large quantities of firewood to boil water.Each Solvatten kit saves an average of 657 hours per year—time once spent collecting fuel and boiling water. For women especially, this means hundreds of regained hours for education, income generation, family care, or rest.The environmental benefits are equally powerful. Each unit avoids about 1.7 tons of fuel use annually and saves roughly 1 ton of CO₂ emissions per year. Reduced firewood demand eases pressure on forests, while approximately 6,000 litres of cleaner water per unit per year reduces contaminants entering rivers and shallow wells.If implemented broadly, the initiative reports the potential to avoid approximately 140,000 tons of fossil-based CO₂ emissions annually.
A Sustainable Model for a Changing Climate
Solvatten is built for longevity. It requires no spare parts, no fuel, and no complex infrastructure. Its hybrid model—combining a limited-profit company with foundations in Sweden and the USA—blends enterprise revenue with philanthropic support, keeping costs accessible while enabling global scale. After more than 12 years of implementation, long-term deployment data and partner monitoring systems support accountability and impact measurement. By transforming sunlight into safe water, Solvatten proves that climate-smart innovation does not need to be complicated. Sometimes, the most powerful solutions are those that fit in a family’s hands.
For hundreds of thousands of people, the sun now means more than heat. It means health. It means time has been regained. It means freedom from smoke-filled kitchens and contaminated water.
