Abstract
Abstract New district heating system technologies have arisen in the last years to deliver economic and environmental benefits to residential and commercial buildings. The extensive ranges of equipment, energy sources, temperature profile configurations, size of the network, energy demand, and many other intrinsic variables, make it difficult to identify if a determined district heating option is potentially better than another in environmental terms. As for the economic evaluation, there are several tools decision-makers can rely on to assess environmental performance. The main challenge is to provide a holistic point of view for which lifespan and complexity of implementable, new technological systems can be an obstacle. For this reason, in this paper, a Life Cycle Assessment is performed upon a technical evaluation of several district heating configuration options for the Gulbene region in Latvia, where DH systems in most of the assessed parishes are already operating under medium temperature regimes, also known as third-generation district heating. The goal of the study is to understand the environmental impact of moving from the current DH system to a low temperature one. Results show a considerable environmental benefit if low-temperature profiles, combined with the use of renewable energy sources are adopted in the current DH systems. A hotspot analysis is also performed showing the use stage is the one carrying most of the burden across the project’s lifetime, followed by infrastructure construction; also showing that the refurbishment of buildings does not play a major role in the total environmental impact contribution.
Highlights
District heating (DH) systems can provide heat supply to communities various in size – from a small parish or community to whole cities
Results from the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) undertaken in this study show the potential benefits in almost all impact categories recommended in [17], with only the mineral extraction category showing an actual negative impact of moving from the current district heating system running in the Gulbene region to a 4GDH system
The environmental benefit of implementing low-temperature district heating systems comes mainly from reduction in the amount of fuel required for operation and from moving from fossil non-renewable energies towards renewable ones as biomass for this case
Summary
District heating (DH) systems can provide heat supply to communities various in size – from a small parish or community to whole cities. It has been determined that further studies and research on district heating systems should focus on the policies and technological routes necessary to achieve economic and technical feasibility to successfully transition towards sustainable district-based systems [6]. These sustainable DH systems include the use of RES and using low-temperature profiles in the DH distribution network. There is the Swedish case, where Sernhed et al (2018) [8], explain how despite Sweden’s DH system is almost fossil-free, the challenge is to give use to low-temperature heat sources They uncovered that the current DH technology needs a long-lasting modification to allow better utilization of renewable, recycled, stored, and waste heat [8]. 2020 / 24 scope, all the activities related to infrastructure preparedness and construction, and the operational phase which involves the raw materials or fuel required to run a DH system and the background processes contained in it and expanding the boundaries to assess the expected changes in the residential and commercial buildings under different scenarios, the goal of fully assessing the environmental impact of these new 4GDH systems is settled
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