Abstract
District heating (DH) has an important role to play in enabling cities to transition to low-carbon heating. Although schemes are commonplace in some countries, in ‘learning countries’ where building-level technologies make up the majority of heating systems there are numerous barriers to introducing DH. Local governments are seen as key actors in helping to create a ‘shared vision’ for DH amongst stakeholders.This study uses interviews with stakeholders from a range of sectors in the UK (an example of a learning country) to examine the visions of local actors for developing DH and the types of national policy that would support local implementation of these visions.The analysis shows that in engaging with DH development local governments seek multiple types of value. Realising this value will most likely happen by taking a long-term, planned approach to development. In contrast, national government policy is geared towards techno-economic criteria and may lead to only a minority of potential sites being developed, without realisation of wider social or environmental benefits aligned to local visions.The work highlights the importance of local strategic planning, enabled by aligned national policy, in realising the full economic, environmental and social benefits of DH.
Highlights
Heat demand accounts for more than half of the world's final energy consumption (Eisentraut and Brown, 2014)
In this work we extend the empirical evidence on the topic of district heating (DH) development by exploring the range of visions and value perceptions articulated by key local actors involved in DH niche creation, using the United Kingdom n Corresponding author at (UK) as a case study of a learning country
The analysis showed that local authorities were aiming to achieve multiple forms of value with DH, recognising the social benefits of the technology as well as the economic and environmental benefits
Summary
Heat demand accounts for more than half of the world's final energy consumption (Eisentraut and Brown, 2014). Thirds of heat demand for residential and service sector buildings in the EU27 countries was met through the burning of fossil fuels in household-level heating technologies and only 12% by district heating (DH) (Fig. 1). As Connolly et al (2014) point out, improvements in energy efficiency and electrification of heating will play an important role in reaching decarbonisation targets, greater use of DH in appropriate areas could offer a scenario that is cheaper and easier to implement than expensive building retrofits to improve energy efficiency.
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