Anthropogenic impact of Moscow district heating system on urban environment

Abstract

Moscow City district heating system is the largest in the world and study of its impact on urban environment is important for understanding and managing possibilities for increasing energy demand efficiency within large urban agglomerations. This research estimated and analyzed carbon and thermal emissions of the Moscow district heating system.Moscow City district heating system is the largest in the world and understanding of its anthropogenic impact on environment, such as CO2 emissions or thermal emissions, is important for understanding and managing possibilities within different urban agglomerations. The heat supply system of Moscow differs from its counterparts in European cities. It is unique in terms of its scale and is generally comparable to individual EU nations in terms of major characteristics. For example, in 2012, the total length of pipelines in Moscow was 16,323 km and the associated contractual thermal load was 19 GW, which exceeds the corresponding aggregate figures for Finland (roughly 13,600 km and 18.5 GW, respectively).In this study authors present the analysis, based on official data of energy use for district heating, which is intended to show “end-user” CO2 and thermal emissions, that represent the consumers and not producers. This research estimates and analyze CO2 emissions and thermal emissions of the Moscow district heating system at the Moscow Administrative Districts level and shows that CO2 emissions for districts vary from 1.16 to 6.74 Mt CO2/year and mean annual thermal emissions vary from 23 to 75 W/m2.