WILLEMSTAD – The newly opened Pyrmont Hotel on Penstraat has become the first hotel in the world to use an innovative air-conditioning system cooled by ocean surface water, marking a significant milestone in sustainable building technology.
The all-inclusive resort has adopted Ocean Water Air Conditioning (OWAC) technology, a cooling system developed in Curaçao that uses surface seawater to cool a building's air-conditioning system. By utilizing naturally cooler ocean water, the hotel is expected to reduce traditional cooling energy consumption by as much as 75 percent.
The technology also lowers installation costs by reducing the electrical capacity required to operate the building's cooling infrastructure.
While the hotel's implementation is a world first for the hospitality industry, the technology itself is not entirely new. The Curaçao Ministry of Finance has already been using the locally developed system for some time to cool its facilities.
With air conditioning representing one of the largest sources of energy consumption in tropical climates, the adoption of OWAC technology is expected to significantly improve the hotel's energy efficiency while reducing its environmental footprint.
The Pyrmont Hotel's decision to implement the Curaçao-developed innovation highlights the island's growing role in sustainable technology and could pave the way for wider adoption of ocean water cooling systems in hotels and commercial buildings across the Caribbean and other tropical regions.