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Lars Hummelmose, Managing Director, DBDH THE COLUMN
THE MIDDLE EAST TAKES THE LEAD IN DISTRICT COOLING DEVELOPMENT
District cooling is an almost 50 years' old and well-proven technology. It started in the US, moved to Europe and the Middle East in the 60s. It started out slow but today it is a multi-billion dollar industry that has grown by 60% the last decade. Today, the Middle East is leading the way, by large new installments of district cooling and today district cooling is counting for 17% of the cooling market, and 32% of the total worldwide capacity is installed in the Middle East. The district cooling market in the Middle East is expected to grow annually with more than 15% the coming years. The new district cooling projects in the Middle East are enormous, and the preferred technology by many developers. The most prestigious development projects in the Middle East have district cooling installed. This counts for landmark projects such as The Pearl Qatar, Dubai Metro, Lusail Development, Riyadh´s King Khalid International Airport and the large district cooling project of Mekkah, in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. All these projects are due to the fact that district cooling is a sustainable and efficient technology that reduces the use of electricity and make it possible to use electricity at off-peak hours. In this edition of Hot Cool, you will find articles describing the general development of district cooling in the Middle East but also some specific projects like the metro project in Qatar and the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi.
The global demand for cooling is exploding and it will continue to grow. It is expected that within the next 40 years, the use of energy for cooling will be larger than the amount of energy used for heating. Due to new type of buildings with much glass and due to large internal heat sources from computers, almost all office building globally needs cooling. Even in Europa, it is expected that from now until 2030, the use of energy for cooling will increase with 72%. But, the largest increase in use of cooling will in the beginning be in the Middle East, then in the growing economies in Asia – first China and later followed by India. Also as the economy grows in Africa, there will be increased need of cooling. The challenge with cooling is that in most places cooling is produced by individual air-condition that use electricity at the same time, in a none intelligent way as any other appliances. That puts an enormous pressure on the peak load capacity of the power system. In some cities the demand for air-condition takes up to 70% of electricity demand. A part of the solution is to use intelligent district cooling. That is district cooling with storage facilities, with cold-water tanks and/or ice storages. Hereby the cooling can be produced at off-peak hours for the power system and thereby it can take off the largest peaks.
Please read on in this Hot Cool magazine and get inspired.
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