THE COLUMN By Lars Gullev, Managing Director, VEKS
DISTRICT HEATING AND COOLING IS THE ANSWER TO EFFICIENT UTILISATION OF OUR RESOURCES
After having been for many years a well-kept secret – hidden under the surface of the earth – district heating and cooling has now swept onto the agenda not only in a few countries, but in large parts of the world, including EU and the Middle East.
The EU Commission’s “Winter Package” is a considerable milestone, which has a lot of initiatives that will have an impact on the entire European energy sector.
The Winter Package is part of the implementation of the Energy Union, and is expected to partly lead to a revision of the RE directive and to lead to concrete recommendations for how the EU Commission will fulfill the union’s joint goal of 27 % renewable energy in 2030.
Why has district heating and cooling finally made it to the agenda?
Because district heating and cooling is a simple and cost-effective concept to solve the large climate challenges that we face. Challenges we are facing not the next week, the next month or the next year – no, challenges that we are facing here and now. The heat supply of the future is based on renewable energy, for example solar panels, geothermal, electricity from wind turbines and solar cells, district heating based on biomass, and utilization of surplus heat – whereas utilization of coal, oil and natural gas will belong to the past in few years. But it is not just the production of district heating that is facing huge changes. The pipe systems will also have to go through a renewal process where the efficiency must be increased by for example reducing the temperature level. For new district heating systems, it does not impose a big problem to design these for 4G DH – i.e. systems with flow-temperature down to 40-50 o C. Within the next ten years, we will also see many district heating systems being redesigned from 3G DH to 4G DH. In this edition of Hot Cool, we have chosen to put focus on some of the award winners from the Global District Energy Climate Awards 2017 – an award, which was set up back in 2009 by DBDH and which has since then been awarded every other year. The articles include “Lusail city district cooling system, Qatar”, ”Efficient district heating and cooling system in Tartu, Estonia”, and “Salaspils Siltums - from post-Soviet boiler station to a modern enterprise, Latvia”.
The articles all offer an insight into how efficient district heating and cooling systems are the backbone of the future energy supply.
HAPPY READING TO LOYAL AS WELL AS NEW READERS OF HOT COOL.
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