Mark & Wedell Selected as Børsen Bæredygtig Case 2026 for Superconducting Technology Enabling the Next Generation Power Transmission

Børsen Bæredygtig Case 2026

Mark & Wedell has today been selected as one of this year’s cases in Børsen Bæredygtig 2026 for the company’s work on superconducting current leads for Irish technology company SuperNode.

With this project, SuperNode has for the first time demonstrated a full-scale superconducting cable solution with a polymer cryostat, including Mark & Wedell’s superconducting current leads installed and commissioned at SuperNode’s test facility in Blyth, UK.

“For many years, we have developed superconducting current leads for research projects at CERN, CEA, and GSI, among others. Now, for the first time, we are seeing our technology make a tangible difference in the commercial energy sector. That is the recognition highlighted by our selection as a Børsen Bæredygtig case,” says Torben Ekvall, CEO, Mark & Wedell.

One of the major bottlenecks in the green transition is not the production of green energy, but its transmission. The existing power grid cannot keep pace with growing electrification, and traditional copper cables are heavy, generate significant heat loss, require substantial space, and rely on a raw material currently trading at record prices.

Mark & Wedell’s superconducting current leads solve a central technical challenge: the connection between the superconducting cable, which operates at minus 200 degrees Celsius, and the conventional power grid at room temperature. With superconducting cables, up to 25 kA DC can be transmitted, equivalent to a combined capacity of 250 MW at 10 kV. That is enough to power more than 1,500 EV fast chargers, delivered through a single cable that occupies a fraction of the space of a conventional copper connection.

The Blyth project was the first step. Mark & Wedell is currently working on solutions for the AC grid at voltages up to 132 kV.

The company has also won a contract for current leads capable of handling even higher currents (45 kA) for a major European fusion energy project in Italy, cementing the technology’s role across both transmission and the future of fusion energy.

In addition, there is a rapidly growing potential in data centers, which consume enormous amounts of power. According to the European Parliament’s think tank, a large data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households. For data centers, the challenges are the same: copper cables are expensive, heavy, and generate significant heat loss.