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Center City steam loop a ‘diamond in the rough,’ new CEO says as pressure builds to go green

By District Energy posted 02-05-2020 16:41

  

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Summary

The Center City district heating system produces steam at a central power plant and delivers it by underground pipes to about 500 buildings. The system is nearly 100 years old, and to casual observers, it seems like a relic of another era.

But William DiCroce, the chief executive of Vicinity Energy, which bought the system recently, would like to cast the district heating network into a different light: Rather than looking at it as one of the city’s largest producers of greenhouse gases, or as an aging industrial eyesore along the Schuylkill, he said it should be viewed as a model of energy efficiency, and as a potential vehicle for introducing renewable fuel to a broader market.

“I try to remind people that these big district energy systems were built back in the day by public utilities, and it would be cost-prohibitive today to replace that,” DiCroce said in an interview. “So it is a diamond in the rough.”

The system, also known as the Center City steam loop, provides high-pressure steam to about 300 customers, including skyscrapers such as the new Comcast Technology Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and such institutions as the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. It heats about 100 million square feet of space, the equivalent of 150 art museums or more than 60 times the space of the new Comcast tower, the city’s tallest.

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