district heating network. Herein lies a large part of the secret behind satisfaction with district heating in Denmark – the local commitment and ownership. The association Dansk Fjernvarme has organized 354 district heating companies that cover 99% of the district heating needs in Denmark. – the 58 companies are municipally owned and cover 50% of the district heating supply. Of the remain- der, 286 companies are consumer-owned, and the remaining ten are private and only cover a tiny part of the district heating market. The oil crises of 1973 and '79 – a wake-up call Until the beginning of 1973, there was no political interest in the district heating sector in Denmark. Still, with a shortage of imported oil - 92% of Denmark's energy consumption was based on imported oil - and rising oil prices as a consequence of the war between Israel and Egypt in 1973 did, it change. And the war between Iran and Iraq in 1979 – again with a shortage of imported oil and sharply rising oil prices – perma- nently changed the Danish energy scene. Heating Supply Act 1979 The Heating Supply Act in 1979, which was the first of its kind in the world, focused on the need for increased energy effi- ciency in Danish society. This meant, among other things, that where it made sense economically, electricity and heat had to be produced together by so-called combined heat and power production. This was the start of establishing the two district heating trans- mission companies - CTR and VEKS - to ensure the utilization of surplus heat from waste energy plants and cogeneration plants in the Copenhagen area. There were two transmission companies due to CTR having to use surplus heat from the waste-to-energy plant Amager Forbrænding and Amager CHP plant, respectively. On the other hand, VEKS had to use the sur-
In September 1903, the city of Frederiksberg received its first waste collection at the new waste incineration plant, and the plant was inaugurated. From December 1 of that same year, the district heating production was put into regular opera- tion. The heat produced by burning the waste was transported in the form of steam via a tunnel to the newly built Frederiksberg Hospital and an orphanage. With the new steam-based district heating supply, hospital standards were raised. Suddenly, mat- tresses and operating equipment could be disinfected, and in the large epidemic and tuberculosis department, it was essen- tial to have a sterile environment. In the following years up to the end of the 1940s, district heat- ing in the municipality of Copenhagen was quietly expanded to supply heat to public buildings - including public bathing fa- cilities. This development took place under the auspices of the company Københavns Belysningsvæsen, which later changed its name to Københavns Energi and today is called HOFOR. Organization of the district heating companies Until the end of the 1940s, all district heating companies had been municipally owned, but now the development of district heating in the Copenhagen area took off in earnest. In part, the increase in living standards had meant that more citizens could pay for installing water-borne heating systems in their homes - as a replacement for the stoves - which made the connection to district heating possible. In part, groups of citizens began to "join together" and establish district heating companies as con- sumer-owned, collectively owned companies. The driver for the latter development was the price difference between the expensive gas oil used in individual oil boilers and the cheaper fuel oil that could be used in large communal boilers. The price difference in oil could be used to finance in- vestments in boiler plants to produce district heating and the
10 HOTCOOL no.1 2023
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