Blogs

RNG: Zero Scope 1 Emissions and Negative Carbon Intensity

By District Energy posted yesterday
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RNG recycles carbon and reduces our dependence on fossil natural gas By   Shashi Menon , EcoEngineers   If we want to get serious about climate change, it is critical we address our over-reliance on fossil fuels, which are a primary driver of greenhouse gas emissions. Whether it’s diesel, gasoline, kerosene, propane, or coal, burning these sources of fuel emits carbon into the atmosphere, disrupts the naturally-occurring carbon cycle in our ecosystem, and fundamentally threatens our way of life. However, recycling the carbon already in the atmosphere prevents the extraction and combustion of fossilized carbon sources.   Think of an aquifer ...
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Dubai's Empower to focus on innovative digital services in 2021

By District Energy posted yesterday
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ZAWYA Summary Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) has announced that the digital transformation of all services provided to its customers is progressing at a high pace and will soon will meet its set targets. In line with the Smart Dubai initiative and in a bid to implement the ’Dubai Paperless Strategy’, customers will be able to perform all their transactions without paying any visits to the company’s headquarters or branches in the near future, said a statement from Empower. Empower pointed out that it has come a long way with regards to converting customers' transactions into high-quality digital services, and is quite close to finalizing ...
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ENGIE, SIDF training program to develop local talent

By District Energy posted yesterday
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Arab News Summary ENGIE, the France-headquartered energy and services conglomerate, and the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF) have welcomed the first batch of trainees for the 2021 ENGIE Saudi Knowledge Sharing Training Program.  The program will focus on the cultivation of skills within the areas of business development, commercial activity and project delivery for a period of six months. The program will enable SIDF employees to work alongside ENGIE professionals, followed by nomination toward an internship program where trainees will have the opportunity to work at ENGIE headquarters in Paris, or any of the 70 countries where ENGIE operates. ...
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Petawawa aims to make its wastewater plant an “Energy Net-Zero Plant”

By District Energy posted yesterday
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Electrical Business Summary Ottawa is investing roughly $2.7 million from the   Low Carbon Economy Fund   to support a project in Petawawa, Ont., that converts food waste into energy. The   Town of Petawawa   is also contributing $2.7 million to the project. “The Town of Petawawa is committed to leading by example on climate change by transitioning the delivery of essential services in a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions generated from our own biogas produced through wastewater operations,” said Bob Sweet, Mayor. Sweet explained that the anaerobic digester technology at the existing wastewater treatment plant will be upgraded to a resource-recovery ...
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Tabreed and IFC to establish district energy investment platform in Singapore

By District Energy posted yesterday
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ME Construction News Summary National Central Cooling Company (Tabreed) and the International Finance Cooperation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, plan to establish a district energy investment platform in Singapore, it has been announced. In a statement, the companies said that the platform will invest in district cooling, trigeneration and cooling as a service offering with primary focus on India followed by other South East Asian countries. The joint venture aims to build on Tabreed’s ongoing development activities in India following the establishment of its wholly owned subsidiary in the country. It will also seek to provide more energy ...
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Iowa State MEs team up with Iowa Army National Guard to improve building resiliency

By District Energy posted yesterday
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Iowa State University - College of Engineering News Summary When the Iowa Army National Guard was looking for ways to improve the environmental sustainability of their facilities, they called upon the expertise of mechanical engineering researchers at Iowa State University. Song-Charng Kong, mechanical engineering (ME) professor at Iowa State, led the effort. Former graduate student Benjamin Robertson, who completed his M.S. in ME in August 2020, assisted Kong. The project was the basis for Robertson’s thesis, Building energy efficiency retrofit prioritization: A case study of the Iowa Army National Guard. The researchers analyzed the energy and water usage ...
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Waterloo Region wastewater plants turn to cogeneration power

By District Energy posted 2 days ago
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Daily Commercial News Summary The Region of Waterloo is reducing its environment footprint with a project intended to decrease electrical costs at its three largest wastewater treatment plants. While the complications created by the global pandemic have set the construction timetable back by four to six months, a $24.1-million project to install cogeneration units at the Kitchener, Galt, and Waterloo plants is now in its final stages, with commissioning expected in the next few months. Jacobs Engineering Group is the consultant overseeing the design and construction of the systems and W.A. Stephenson Mechanical Contractors Ltd. is the general contractor. ...
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INEOS launches hydrogen pilot project in Belgium

By District Energy posted 2 days ago
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Power Engineering International Summary For the first time in Belgium, hydrogen will be used in a commercial scale cogeneration plant designed to generate electricity and heat from natural gas. The aim of the pilot project by INEOS and ENGIE is to replace natural gas with hydrogen used by the INEOS gas turbine. Initially, 10% of the gas feed will be replaced by hydrogen. If this goes well, the feed will be increased to 20%. This is the first time that such tests have been carried out on an industrial scale in Belgium. The CHP plant at the INEOS Phenol site in Doel, one of the first to be built in Belgium, has the ideal profile to realise this test. Hydrogen ...
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Penn State's solar energy partnership recognized for sustainability innovation

By District Energy posted 2 days ago
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Penn State Summary Penn State has been awarded a 2020 Sustainability Innovation Award by APPA, the professional association of educational facilities, for its commitment to solar energy. Although still in its infancy, the 70-megawatt solar energy partnership between Penn State and Lightsource bp, which will provide 25% of the University’s statewide electrical needs, is drawing national attention. In January 2019, the University signed a 25-year agreement with Lightsource bp to construct and purchase Pennsylvania-based solar energy. A   groundbreaking ceremony   followed in September 2019, and by October 2020, with the solar array constructed and ready ...
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Pittsburgh Officials Advance Plan for New Steam Heating System

By District Energy posted 2 days ago
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Trib Live Summary For more than a century, many of Pittsburgh’s office buildings in the Golden Triangle have been kept warm using steam heat generated at a North Shore factory that is conveyed Downtown. But the Pittsburgh Allegheny County Thermal (PACT) system is old, failing and beyond repair,   Mayor Bill Peduto said last year . A fix is in the works through an agreement the city inked last week with   Clearway Community Energy , another North Side-based provider that’s a subsidiary of Clearway Energy Group, a San Francisco-based provider. The letter of intent signed by the   city will allow for plans to transition   from the PACT system to a ...
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Vicinity Energy Provides Green Steam to Walters Art Museum Under New 20-Year Contract, Delivering Heat and Precise Humidification to Historic Buildings and Artifacts

By District Energy posted 2 days ago
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Vicinity Press Release Summary Vicinity Energy , owner of the nation’s largest portfolio of district energy systems, announces a 20-year steam contract with Walters Art Museum to provide heating and humidification to the landmark Baltimore facility, which encompasses 70,000 square feet of space. With 50 percent of its steam generated from renewables, the district energy system will deliver high-pressure sustainable steam for the museum, replacing the facility’s current boiler setup. Walters Art Museum will receive approximately 12,000 pounds of steam per hour (pph), replacing its traditional boiler system and transitioning its two existing functional boilers ...
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Enwave and Mattamy Homes - Industry Leaders Unite in a Groundbreaking Partnership

By District Energy posted 4 days ago
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Through an exclusive partnership with Enwave Energy Corp, an industry-leading district energy provider, Springwater residents will enjoy year-round heating and cooling provided by GeoExchange technology. Operating with 4x more efficiency than natural gas furnaces, Enwave's GeoExchange system requires no direct fossil fuels, little maintenance and improve your carbon emissions by up to 75% when compared to an Ontario Building Code home with a furnace. Continue Reading #MemberAnnouncement #Enwave
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National Grid's Clean Energy Commitment to Worcester, Massachusetts and Beyond

By District Energy posted 4 days ago
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Telegram Gazette Summary As elected officials continue crafting the next generation of Massachusetts climate policies, National Grid’s employees have been preparing for and delivering on a clean energy future that’s fair and affordable for all. Climate change remains one of the greatest challenges facing our state, country and planet and even during a pandemic, transitioning to a clean energy future must be a priority. While we certainly don’t have all the answers, one thing is clear: Now isn’t the time to continue with the status quo, nor to exclude potential solutions. In early 2020, we endorsed the Commonwealth’s decision to strengthen its greenhouse ...
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Thames Water hopes to harness human 'poo power' to heat homes

By District Energy posted 7 days ago
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The Gaurdian Summary Thousands of homes in south-west London could soon be warmed by the waste from their local sewage works as part of England’s first poo-powered district heating scheme. Thames   Water   hopes to harness the heat of human waste from its treatment plant in Kingston upon Thames to warm more than 2,000 new homes that form part of a regeneration plan for the borough’s Cambridge Road estate. Typically, the water company flushes the clean warm water that remains after it has treated its customers’ sewage back into a local river system as effluent. But under the new plan it will funnel the warm water to an energy centre where the effluent ...
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GMP microgrid in Panton will keep the lights on during outages

By District Energy posted 9 days ago
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VermontBiz Summary Green Mountain Power (GMP) will break ground this spring on a cutting-edge utility microgrid in Panton, Vermont, pioneering a new way to keep the power on for residents, farms and municipal buildings in the town center during power outages. A microgrid is essentially a smaller grid that can operate independently, disconnecting from the larger grid during outages. Panton is the perfect place for this innovative work because it leverages GMP’s existing 4.9-megawatt solar facility with utility-scale batteries already up and running in the town. This project is unique because GMP is believed to be the first utility in the country to island ...
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Ramboll supporting CIP's Power-to-X facility

By District Energy posted 9 days ago
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4C Offshore Summary Ramboll has been made responsible for safety and risk analyses in the initial phase of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' (CIP)  recently announced Power-to-X facility , which will convert power from offshore wind turbines to green ammonia. The new facility, which will be located in Esbjerg, Denmark, will be developed by CIP in collaboration with the agriculture and shipping industry. It will convert offshore wind energy to green ammonia, which will be used by the agriculture sector as CO2-free fertilizer and by the shipping industry as CO2-free fuel. The excess heat will be used to provide district heating for around one ...
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How Sweden is transforming its homes into power stations

By District Energy posted 9 days ago
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The Print Summary By 2030, almost a third of all the energy consumed in the European Union must come from renewable sources,   according to binding targets agreed   in 2018. Sweden is helping lead the way. As well as targeting   100% renewable electricity production   by 2040, the country is   transforming homes into highly efficient ‘prosumers’   – buildings which both produce and consume the vast majority of their own energy. Meanwhile local ‘district heating’ plants are using excess heat to produce   over 75% of the warmth that Swedish households   need. The country also manages to combine the world’s highest carbon taxes with   relatively ...
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Duluth looks to cut emissions through sharing more efficient building heat

By District Energy posted 9 days ago
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Energy News Network Summary The Minnesota city has made significant investments in its aging district energy system, adding natural gas boilers and replacing steam pipes with hot water loops. The city of Duluth, Minnesota, continues to lower emissions from downtown buildings as it expands a redesigned district heating system. Originally built in 1932, the system acts like a shared boiler for a network of buildings in the city’s core. Over the last decade, the city has mostly phased out coal, converting two of its four boilers to run on natural gas. More recently it began replacing old steam pipes with a more efficient closed-loop system that circulates hot ...
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Leapfrogging gas: how geothermal could help eastern EU countries ditch fossil fuels

By District Energy posted 9 days ago
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Euractiv Summary Geothermal energy could help central and eastern Europe break away from coal and gas, but it needs a quicker uptake and government backing to help meet renewable energy targets, advocates say. Countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Romania and Croatia sit over the Pannonian basin, which has huge potential for geothermal energy and is over 10°C per kilometre hotter than the European average, making them a prime location for geothermal deployment. Moreover, district heating systems inherited from Soviet times mean much of the infrastructure required for geothermal heating already exists. Martin Hojsík is a member of Renew from Slovakia. ...
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EC to Support Rehabilitation of District Heating System in Bucharest

By District Energy posted 9 days ago
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Energy Industry REview Summary The European Commission has approved, under EU State Aid rules, Romanian plans to support the upgrade of the district heating system of the municipality of Bucharest. “This €254 million aid measure, funded thanks to EU structural funds, will help Romania achieve its energy-efficiency targets and will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas and other pollutants emissions, without unduly distorting competition,” Executive Vice-President   Margrethe Vestager , in charge of competition policy, said. Romania notified the Commission of its plans to provide public support of approximately €254 million (1,208 billion RON) ...
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