Solar energy is a solution that provides promising opportunities. It can be used in virtually all buildings to operate the cooling circuits and therefore to air-condition rooms. The cooling load is usually provided if solar energy is available and therefore the cooling demand of a building is approximately equivalent to the solar radiation. Solar air-conditioning systems are usually operated with entirely non-hazardous operating liquids such as water or brine solutions.

The economics of any large scale solar thermal plant can be improved substantially by integrating hot water supply all year round. Solar Hot Water is the most efficient solar technology. One single solar thermal plant can deliver hot water both for driving an absorption chiller machine for cooling and for sanitary hot water preparation.