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President's Message 1st Quarter 2013

By Robert Thornton posted 06-16-2017 20:11

  

From District Energy Magazine, First Quarter, 2013


 

I have been active in the district energy industry for over 25 years. From the beginning, I have heard one universal theme repeated time and again wherever our members are operating a district energy system. The common refrain, around the world, is that the general public is largely unaware of the presence of district energy. Even in Copenhagen, where over 98 percent of the buildings are connected to the district heating network that underpins the low-carbon strategy for which Denmark is famous, our colleagues report little citizen recognition of their world-class system. Surely, we should expect better industry recognition in Copenhagen...

Here in the U.S., virtually all of our larger college and university campuses have deployed district energy systems for many decades, yet students and alumni are largely unaware that they lived in dorms or studied in buildings where heat came from pipelines across campus. In the central business districts of our larger cities, where district heating systems have delivered reliable and convenient comfort for several generations, our presence is rarely acknowledged. Perhaps it's because our systems are largely underground and out of sight that we lack the recognition accorded spinning wind turbines or gleaming blue PV farms. More often, district heat is associated with steam wafting up from the street in a dense urban setting, usually in a television commercial or movie scene set downtown. This is not exactly the ideal image of modern energy infrastructure.

But when I tell people that IDEA is now in its 103rd year, they tend to lift their eyebrows and seem genuinely impressed by our longevity. While I often joke that we are the "best-kept secret in the energy industry," it really is important that we work harder on getting the word out. For policy makers to fully embrace our industry, they first have to learn about us and understand our operations. It's even more important that we broaden the discussion beyond the technical and operational focus of our conferences and communicate the larger societal and economic advantages that our systems deliver every day. We have to convey these benefits in terms that policy makers and the general public will understand.

In the past few years, I have witnessed a significant increase in the frequency of announcements and the overall activity in the district energy space. Along with other NGOs, IDEA has been making a concerted effort to inform and expand awareness of our industry through a variety of approaches, and it seems our actions are beginning to bear fruit. We have additional plans to move our message "beyond the choir" and I thought it worthwhile to share our game plan in this column.

In early December, I was a guest of Dalkia Australia to address the Energy Efficiency Council Annual Conference in Sydney to share examples on how IDEA members design and operate district energy systems designed for optimum reliability and efficiency. In the case of UT Austin, while the campus has literally doubled in size over the past 15 years, their investments in energy efficiency now allow them to serve 18 million sq ft of space with the same volume of fuel as when the campus was just 9 million sq ft, essentially providing carbon-neutral growth on campus. After my remarks, I was approached by a young woman with the New South Wales Energy Agency who said she enjoyed my talk and learned a great deal about our sector. She went on to say that she was a recent graduate of UT Austin but was not aware that her alma mater had such an impressive district energy system. On the whole, the audience was very receptive to IDEA and we hope to build an ongoing dialogue with our Australian colleagues as the city of Sydney implements a district energy strategy.

A similar occurrence happened in November after I addressed the National League of Cities Conference when an audience member came forward afterward to comment favorably on what she had heard about the energy efficiency of her alma mater, Princeton University. She said she emailed her daughter, a current Princeton Tiger, to check out the campus district energy system.

Realizing that we have this recognition gap, and a desire to engage more young people in our sector, last year IDEA initiated a campus video competition among campus sustainability offices asking students to produce short videos that describe how their district energy system delivers efficiency and environmental gains. The submittals were very instructive and compelling, almost too close to call, but Princeton University ultimately prevailed. I invite you to review the 2012 entries (available here) and share them among your circle of friends. We are conducting a similar contest in2013 and hope to welcome even more participants to spread the good word.

Since 1990, IDEA has also recognized excellence through our annual System of the Year Award. This is a global competition that traditionally draws out compelling examples of innovation and often serves to redefine industry best practices. From district cooling utilizing lake water to combined heat and power fueled by wood waste, IDEA Systems of the Year demonstrate world-class applications for community energy efficiency and reduced emissions. Prior winners are listed on our website.

As more mayors and planners look to integrate district energy to support energy resiliency objectives, IDEA has distributed over 3,000 copies of the guide Community Energy: Planning, Development and Delivery. The guide is intended to help readers understand how to evaluate, plan and develop economically viable district energy systems to achieve community economic and environmental goals. We are seeing a marked increase in interest among community leaders seeking more information on how to move forward with system development.

The importance of greater awareness and visibility cannot be overstated. In 2009, IDEA first collaborated with Euroheat & Power, the International Energy Agency and others to launch the International District Energy Climate Awards in conjunction with the COP 15 UN Conference in Copenhagen. Originally designed around the IDEA Systems of the Year framework, the intent of the awards is to demonstrate how communities use district energy infrastructure to enhance energy efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The award winners in 2009 and 2011 showcased tremendous achievements that can serve to educate and motivate other community leaders on best practices. This year, IDEA will be hosting the global awards event on Sept. 23-24, 2013 in New York City in conjunction with Climate Week NYC and the Clinton Climate Initiative/C40 Cities. Our plan is to leverage and link our event to the broader energy and climate dialogue among world leaders, with the objective to capture enhanced media visibility. We are actively soliciting sponsors and hope to reach a global audience by linking our results to the CCI/C40 mission. In fact, IDEA has already begun collaborating with CCI/C40 by co-presenting a webinar on district cooling in December.

The International District Energy Climate Awards will help to frame the larger economic and environmental arguments of how district energy infrastructure creates real value in communities, cities and campuses. As an example, one of the 2009 award winners was Dunkerque, France, where surplus heat from the local steel mill provides approximately 68 percent of the thermal energy for the district heating network, cutting GHG emissions and creating additional revenue for the steel mill. The local economy benefits by the multiple synergies in the Dunkerque model, demonstrating how district energy infrastructure unleashes economic and environmental benefits.

For 2013, we are pleased to announce the new IDEA Innovation Awards, an initiative of IDEA Chairman Joe Brillhart, which is intended to increase visibility for the many technical and operating innovations that IDEA members implement within our systems each year. Rather than focusing holistically on larger system advantages embodied in the System of the Year Award, the IDEA Innovation Awards will allow members to drill down on specific applications and technologies that have produced benefits like higher efficiency, enhanced monitoring, lower emissions, operational savings or greater reliability. With so many IDEA members collaborating to increase efficiency and strengthen operations, the Innovation Awards will help to shed light on our best practices that can be replicated around the world.

It is also important that we carry our message forward to different audiences and venues. This fall, Tim Griffin of RMF Engineering participated in a special symposium on district energy at GreenBuild 2012 in San Francisco. As many of you know, Tim has been working closely with USGBC on greater recognition of district energy in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and forging better communications between our industry and the green building movement. I urge you to read Tim's column in this issue; he makes a compelling case for getting involved to influence policy and inform trends. We clearly have much work to do and we need IDEA members to assume more professional responsibility for advancing our common cause.

IDEA has also adopted outreach tools such as the Vocus media platform to target press releases to leading energy and environmental desks. Our RSS feed and blog provide daily stories from colleagues around the world that are linked with our digital District Energy magazine, reaching many thousands with a keystroke. Our Twitter followers have grown dramatically and we now reach over 12,000 global industry participants when we distribute content. It is now a regular occurrence to receive requests to comment on or contribute to an article or white paper on district energy or CHP. Our Facebook and LinkedIn pages are gaining traction and we recently invested in new teleconference hardware to enhance our capabilities for online training that we will be rolling out in 2013. We plan to reach new and more members around the globe via enhanced teleconferencing.

So, the word is getting out. For IDEA, it is important that we work to frame the discussion around district energy and make it easier for people to understand how our systems work to support community energy and economic goals. The world is looking for what we have to offer; we just need to help them find us.



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