In France, district heating systems are still struggling to develop and reach ambitious growth objectives. Why is there such a gap between ambitions and realities despite many efforts being put into developing district heating systems? Maybe due to the non-align- ment between national policymakers and local project developers. SUSTAINABLE DISTRICT HEATING: A LOCAL VS. (INTER)NATIONAL DILEMMA?
By Johanna Ayrault, PhD in Management Science, MSc in Executive Engineering
What, why, and for whom? The article points out recommendations to foster the devel- opment of district heating systems in countries struggling to reach their growth ambitions. The article mainly targets pol- icymakers and other national organizations supporting the development of district heating. It presents the gap between the policy vision of district heating and project development, offering ideas on how to close it. If international organizations recognize that district heating (DH) systems are a great lever for the energy transition, their development still does not meet expectations. On the one hand, national and international public policies claim to sup- port the development of more sustainable DH systems. On the other hand, the coverage of sustainable DH remains low. Why is there such a gap between the strategy and its opera- tionalization? One answer (among many others) I want to put forward is the non-alignment of temporalities and values be- tween policymakers and operational project managers. I will take the example of France, where DH only represents about 5% of the residential heat demand despite being a building block of the national ecological transition strategy. This work was conducted during a CIFRE Ph.D. in France from 2019 to 2022. 1. National policymakers, a technocratic approach to district heating As France has growth objectives for DH (see Box 1), several public policies, instruments, and institutions should support its development. One of the main levers for this development is the ADEME – the national expertise center for the ecological transition – and, more precisely, the Heat Funds. Heat Funds are subsidies given to public authorities developing “sustaina- ble district heating” to ensure its competitiveness compared to
Box 1: French growth objectives on district heating The 2015 law on the energy transition for green devel- opment sets up the objective of multiplying by five the amount of renewable heat and cold delivered by DH and cooling systems between 2012 and 2030. This ob- jective was reasserted in the national energy roadmap 2020 and should be based on biomass (double used between 2019 and 2023), geothermal energy (fourfold increase), and waste heat. This mix would be comple- mented by biogas and thermal solar panels.
natural gas. Heat Funds are recognized as a great lever for the development of DH, yet France struggles to reach its objectives.
1.1 An engineering approach to district heating When screening the indicators evaluating the sustainability of DH, it is striking how technical they are. Sustainability means 50% or more of renewable and recovered heat. You may won- der which production means fall into this category? There is a comprehensive list of what is considered renewable heat. And here is where the first issue arises: this list was issued in 2009 and has been regularly updated. At every update, new spec- ifications on what is considered a « sustainable heat source » were added (Figure 1). However, this list is never comprehensive, always one step be- hind the market state, and not entirely aligned with local in- terests. 1.2 The case of recovered heat There are no specifications on what can be considered “recov- ered” heat. Due to this lack of clarity, it is hard for project devel- opers to engage in the development of such DH systems: they have few supporting tools or institutions to help them, and they have no insurance that the system they set up will be con-
1 2 HOTCOOL no.6 2023
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