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Donna Gartland, Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland

Summary

Imagine life without fear of leaving on the immersion? Guest blogger, Donna Gartland, Executive Energy Planner with Codema – Dublin’s Energy Agency, writes about how Ireland needs to start looking to sustainable alternatives like district heating.

Ireland are currently struggling to meet EU 2020 Renewable Energy targets, especially in the heating sector. With the focus now on non-ETS CO2 emissions to 2030, its time to learn from our European neighbours and start looking to sustainable alternatives to heat our buildings.

When the ‘Beast from the East’ stopped us in our snowy tracks recently, most of us fired up our gas or oil boilers, lit our fires, or put the electric storage heating on full blast.  Aside from the inconceivable horror of losing internet connection or running out of precious commodities like bread, we all prayed the power wouldn’t go down, we wouldn’t run out of oil or briquettes, the boiler wouldn’t break down and there would be no disruption to gas supplies. After all, there are only so many back-up heating systems we can have in our own homes.

Technology is strange, when you’re a stranger

District heating is definitely a foreign concept to us Irish. For those who have heard of such heating systems, they think of places like Eastern Europe or cities like Copenhagen and Stockholm, which have huge district heating schemes serving millions of customers. These systems have played a key role in making these cities some of the most sustainable cities in the world, while also lowering costs for customers. District heating is one of the oldest methods of heating buildings and delivers 9% of Europe’s total heating demands. In certain countries like Denmark, it delivers 60% of their heating demands.

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