Renewable Matter
Summary
Heating and cooling already account for half of Europe’s energy use, and most of that demand is still met by fossil fuels. At the same time, an amount of heat equivalent to 30% of total final energy consumption is simply wasted – a volume that “could largely cover all our needs for space heating and cooling if it were recovered and captured,” as Margot Pinault, policy officer at the EU’s DG ENER, reminded participants at the workshop Strategic Directions for the Heating & Cooling Transition.
The workshop, hosted on 26 February in Brussels and organized by Euroheat & Power, the international network for district energy that promotes sustainable heating and cooling in Europe and beyond, provided a reality check on challenges and the need for more swift actions. District heating and cooling (DHC) – centralised networks that deliver hot or chilled water from a common plant to many buildings – are one of the key solutions to tap this potential and replace individual fossil-fuel boilers. According to Aalborg University’s Heat Roadmap Europe study, DHC will need to reach about 55% of the heating and cooling market by 2050 if the EU is to fully decarbonise the sector in a cost‑effective way, up from roughly 13% today.
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