This taxonomy opens the door for money that would have gone to renewable energy, such as wind turbines and solar cells, to go to natural gas and nuclear power, making it very difficult for Eu- ropean consumers to invest sustainably. GREEN VERSUS BLACK HEAT: ARE WE AT RISK OF COLOR BLINDNESS?
Let’s hope that the European Parliament will end this redefinition of green and black colors.
There has been massive criticism from several countries that the Commission has not listened, as neither nuclear power nor natural gas should be called green in line with renewable energy. The Commission sends an entirely wrong signal to investors, and the taxonomy will promote in- vestment in technologies that are problematic for both the climate and the environment.
The UK governments’ ambitions for new hydrogen infra- structure n could create new sources of waste heat suffi- cient to supply the entire UK demand for domestic space heating. But this heat does not have to go to waste. If hydro- gen production can be located close to towns and cities, where there is high heat demand, district heating networks could provide significant economic, environmental, and social benefits to everyone - the hydrogen producer, the district heating network, and consumers. This was the con- clusion of a study conducted by Ramboll UK on behalf of the Danish Government’s Energy Governance Partnership at the Danish Embassy in the UK. Here, we explore wheth- er district heating is in tension with the electrification ver- sus hydrogen debate, the opportunities for district heating from waste heat from hydrogen production, and how to actually make this work through policy and planning. Hydrogen has been identified by all UK govern- ments as having an important role in the decarbon- isation of heating. Hydrogen is on everyone’s mind these days – at least in Newstudy shows significant economic, environmental andsocial benefits from co-development of hydrogen and dis- trict heating (DH) in the UK
So, where is district heating on the green/black scale?
The district heating of the future will primarily be based on utilization of surplus heat from data centers, CO 2 capture, from Power-to-X (PtX) fac- tories and waste energy plants, heat from sea- and sewage water heat pumps, from geothermal plants, from electric boilers, and combined heat and power plants based on sustainable biomass. So, district heating will be the greenest you can imagine. All in all, green, sustainable technologies that ei- ther utilize the energy resources in society with- out a well-functioning district heating system would be lost to society - or technologies based on sustainable fuels.
In our district heating world, there is no doubt about what is green and what is black.
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