Tirana Times
Summary
An ingenious example of fighting urban heat comes from Singapore. Instead of relying on numerous personal AC units scattered throughout residential buildings, Singapore has opted for a city-wide cooling system that runs underground. This is an application of ‘district cooling,’ and it relies on centralised cooling plants that output chilled water. This water scatters through insulated pipes of the underground distribution network of Singapore. The principle is simple: buildings that have collected heat under an unrelenting sun transfer that heat to the cooled water that proliferates through buildings’ air conditioning systems. As the heat exchange process comes to a close, the heated water heads back to the central cooling plant through a different network of pipes, where it’s cooled once again and redistributed. This is done again and again throughout the hot summers of Singapore.
District cooling certainly shows a lot of promise, and other places around the world have already started implementing large-scale projects like that of Singapore. Chicago, for instance, draws cool water from Lake Michigan to cool its downtown area. Toronto is doing something similar. Over in Europe, you have the extensive district cooling system of France, and there’s the Helsinki system in Finland, the systems in Sweden, and so on. Cities in the Middle East also stand as notable examples.
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