FORESIGHT Climate & Energy - Spring/Summer 2019 - Teaser

FORESIGHT — 08 Climate & Energy

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CLEAN HEATING & COOLING TIME FOR LAWMAKERS TO ACT

TECHNOLOGY

BUSINESS

CITIES

MARKETS

Parisian radiators with brains

Hot cows and heat pumps

Zero emissions district heating

Goodbye to natural gas

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MAKE HEATING AND COOLING CLEAN

The path lawmakers must take

FORESIGHT Climate & Energy SPRING / SUMMER 2019

PUBLISHER First Purple Publishing

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A decarbonised heating and cooling system is vital for the energy transition, but fossil fuels remain the sector’s dominant energy source globally. The technologies exist to switch heating and cooling to clean sources of energy, and work by Heat Roadmap Europe and others shows the way forward. Progress in that transition is slow, however, with poor policy to blame. It is high time lawmakers stepped up to the plate. They must enforce existing laws, create new rules to fill regulatory gaps and introduce investment mechanisms for a timely and cost-effective turnaround in the heating and cooling sector.

Change means phasing out oil and replacing coal generation in district energy systems with solar thermal energy, wind energy, direct geothermal heat, waste heat and large heat pumps. It also means extending and building new district heat networks, and massively increasing the use of heat pumps in buildings, especially outside dense urban areas. Data and planning at a local, regional and national level are key to finding the best solutions for different geographies, as is the spreading of best practice to avoid time wasting.

The energy transition in the heating and cooling sector requires upfront capital investment. Just as the UK and the Netherlands introduced ambitious strategies to hook up virtually every household to mains gas in the 1960s, the same approach must be adopted if renewable energies are to warm our homes and offices instead of fossil fuel boilers. Lawmakers need to be guided by infrastructure investments in line with the Paris climate agreement.

Local ownership of heating and cooling networks, their development encouraged by low interest rate public loans and national subsidies, could be one solution to speed up the transition and boost trust in these systems.

But technology, infrastructure and cleaner energy can only go so far. Architecture and town planning are vital considerations for decarbonised heating and cooling. Buildings must be properly insulated and the right incentives offered to make this affordable and available for everybody.

The penchant for glass and steel towers without shade or greenery is a disaster for energy efficiency in a warming world. Traditional building techniques should be combined with twenty-first century innovation to create homes and offices that are highly efficient and keep their occupants at the right temperature without heating or cooling peaks. Powering air conditioning units with renewable energy will reduce their carbon footprint, as will efficiency standards and better installation, but better still are cooling solutions that do not require energy.

Modern life is dependent on ambient indoor temperatures that are neither too hot nor too cold. But achieving the right temperature should not be at the expense of the climate.

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

FORESIGHT

CONTENT

TECHNOLOGY

MARKETS

CITIES

BUSINESS

POLICY

NAKED ENERGY

THE HEAT SOURCE BENEATH OUR FEET

THE PATH TO EMISSION FREE DISTRICT HEATING IN DENMARK

TEPID SUPPORT FOR REUSING WASTE HEAT FROM DATA CENTRES

COOLING IN A WARMING WORLD

UK start-up decarbonising buildings with eye-catching rooftop solar technology

The potential of geothermal energy to warm homes and offices

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PARISIAN RADIATORS WITH BRAINS

GOODBYE TO NATURAL GAS

Innovative computing products from France that generate heat close to the end user

The Netherlands has 30 years to switch off gas in favour of cleaner fuels

Two-thirds of Danish homes are heated through district heating, largely powered by fossil fuels and biomass. Replace thermal generators with heat pumps run on renewable electricity and heating becomes emissions free

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A PLACE IN THE SUN

Solar photovoltaic can boost the heating and cooling energy transition

Complicated and costly to make a business case for getting heat from out-oftown data centres to urban areas Page 36

HOT COWS AND HEAT PUMPS

Large heat pumps can provide approximately 10% of Europe’s industrial heat demand

Renewables, efficiency and standards are key to curtailing energy use from air conditioning Page 56

INTERVIEW WITH DOMINIQUE RISTORI, EUROPEAN COMMISSION

EU plans to decarbonise heating and cooling, replacing old boilers with cleaner solutions Page 60

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UP FRONT / TIME FOR LAWMAKERS TO ACT

Use proven and market available technologies to kickstart change

THE BIG PICTURE / LOUVRE, ABU DHABI

PHOTO ESSAY / TOMATOES AND TULIPS

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The importance of being well built

Cleaner hot air to produce fruit and veg

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FORESIGHT

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UPFRONT

cooling using excess heat, efficiency and renewable sources to stay within the 1.5-2°C global temperature change threshold.”

China and Chile are now carrying out their own mapping exercises.

HEATING AND COOLING DECARBONISED

The key is technology at scale

IMAGE PROBLEM

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FORESIGHT

KNOWN QUANTITY The beauty of district heating, compared to other solutions, is that it is a known quantity. “Given the high stakes at play and the urgency of the climate situation, we need more and faster progress on the ground starting immediately,” says Paul Voss, managing director of Euroheat & Power, a lobby organisation based in Brussels, Belgium. “This means relying on proven technologies that are already available and establishing a legal framework that supports their development.”

This is what the UN, with various partners, including Danish engineering company Danfoss, is pursuing with its District Heating Initiative. Starting with China, India, Serbia and Chile in 2014, it works with cities and countries around the world to decarbonise their heating and cooling systems through thermal networks. Much of its work is awareness raising and best practice sharing, explains programme manager Lily Riahi. “In India, we spent two years raising awareness,” she says. “We now see a groundswell of support

TEXT Philippa Nuttall Jones ILLUSTRATION Trine Natskår

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n the traditional children’s story, Goldilocks tests the bowls of porridge belonging to the three bears to see which is the best to eat. One is too hot, another too cold. But the third is just right, the perfect temperature to be gobbled up. For life to exist, the temperature of our planet needs to pass the Goldilocks test — not too hot or too cold. We want our homes and offices also to be just right.

Creating the perfect indoor temperature is, however, often at the expense of the planet’s equilibrium since most heating and cooling systems are powered by greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. Getting the decarbonisation of these systems onto the political agenda has been slow going. But heat pumps and district heating are increasingly on policy makers’ lips as they realise the importance of cleaner heating and cooling processes to meet international climate targets. Solutions exist, yet systematic action and dedicated financing remain patchy.

In Europe, 84% of heating and cooling is still generated from fossil fuels with only 16% from renewable energy. The Heat Roadmap Europe (HRE) strategy is aimed at turning this situation around and showing a clear path ahead. Over a three-year period to February 2019, the EU-funded initiative mapped and modelled the energy systems of the 14 European countries that use the most heat. This covers 85-90% of all heating and cooling demand in Europe.

In its final report, HRE concludes that by redesigning energy system: “Using only proven and market available technologies, it is possible to combine enduse savings with heat pumps and district heating and

The solution to decarbonising the world’s heating and cooling systems lies in changing attitudes as much as changing technologies. Mention district heating to people over the age of 50 and many will reply with a dismissive “Soviet era stuff”. Many countries where district heating has remained commonplace are indeed former, or current, Communist states. Globally, new district heating connections have grown by around 3.5% a year since 2010, driven in particular

by China’s extensive network, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

But district heating may be about to get trendy everywhere.

“The expansion of thermal grids is crucial to redesign the energy system and enable better integration of renewable energy and excess heat sources,” says HRE. District heating can cost-effectively provide at least half of the heating demand by 2050 in the 14 HRE countries, expanded from about 12% today.

But the district heating systems of the future will need to be fuelled differently than those in action today. Low-carbon energy sources will have to replace coal and natural gas. Biomass boilers, renewables, excess heat, and the use of combined heat and power and large-scale heat pumps, are all possibilities, concludes HRE.

UPFRONT

for district networks and they are in the country’s draft national cooling action plan.”

Back in Europe, the Netherlands and France are leading the new charge for district heating in a bid to catch up with their more advanced Scandinanvian and Baltic neighbours. After the Dutch government announced plans to switch off gas, Delft decided a “collective heating network is the best alternative for high-rise buildings”, most likely fuelled by geothermal and residual heat from the Port of Rotterdam, says Stephan Brandligt, the city’s deputy mayor.

France already has around 500 district heating networks providing 6% of its heat demand. Natural gas is the main fuel, but its 2015 energy transition law calls for the share of renewable energy and recovery to increase in district heating from 24.6 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2016 to 39.5 TWh in 2030.

Brian Vad Mathiesen, professor in energy planning at Denmark’s University of Aalborg and part of the HRE project, would like to see other countries being similarly ambitious. “In the UK and the Netherlands it was a public project to build national gas grids. This is what we need to create a district heating market,” he says, underlining the difficulties of getting private companies to invest with a return only 40 to 50 years later.

HEAT PUMPS While district heating may be the urban solution, “individual heat pumps will be key to enabling resource efficiency and electrification” in more rural areas, says HRE. “Since the investment required FORESIGHT

to unlock their potential is high and often borne by building owners, the focus should be on policies and implementation strategies that encourage switching from individual boilers and inefficient electric heating.”

Outside of Sweden, where around 40% of singlefamily households have one, heat pumps are a relatively rare phenomenon in the EU because an immature market means prices are high. But elsewhere in the world they are more widespread. “Air source heat pumps are common technology used in every part of the US,” says the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) in a report published in November 2018.

It cites research by the Rocky Mountain Institute showing that, in certain places, heat pumps are already more cost-effective than other heat sources in new buildings over a 15-year period. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory projects they will be cost-competitive with gas furnaces everywhere in the country by 2050 at the latest.

For RAP, changing the way we heat and cool our homes is not only advantageous for the climate, but reduces household bills and enables better grid management. “Electrification of space heating can represent opportunities for all consumers to save money on their total energy bills,” says RAP. “Due to their efficiency, heat pumps can provide equivalent space conditioning for as little as one-quarter the cost of operating conventional heating or cooling appliances.”

And in terms of grid management, electric space heating technologies provide valuable benefits through peak load reduction and ancillary services, says RAP. “Controlled heat pumps can enable demand response programmes whereby a utility can reduce the electric load of a group of heat pumps by an individually small amount that measurably reduces grid demand when combined.”

INSULATION, INSULATION, INSULATION Important as the fuel source and technology are, there is a general consensus that buildings must be properly insulated to ensure peak efficiency. “Heat and building envelopes are the real elephants in the room and countries need to do more to tackle this,” says John Dulac from the IEA. “France and Germany are doing a good job in terms of near-zero energy new buildings, but new constructions are only a small part of the market. Existing buildings are a challenge and there are few incentives for consumers to go above and beyond changing their windows and putting in basic insulation.” This is especially problematic for low income householders, says Dulac. He also points out the lack of energy performance standards for existing buildings and the fact those that exist are “often 9

The Big Picture Before air conditioning, buildings in hot countries were designed to keep their inhabitants cool. But over time technical solutions have replaced architectural prowess. Technology keeps temperatures down, but pushes up greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change.

The Louvre in Abu Dhabi, daughter of its celebrated mother museum in Paris, is itself a work of modern art and proof that style and energy efficiency can go hand in hand. Passive design techniques inspired by traditional regional architecture create a building that is beautiful and climate-friendly.

A dome acts as a shading canopy to protect the outdoor plaza and lower buildings from the sun, cooling visitors indoors and outdoors without the need for fossil fuel guzzling air conditioning PHOTO Agnieszka Kowalczyk

GEOTHERMAL

Geothermal heating is gaining a foothold, but still accounts for only a small share of the renewable heat sources used globally. The benefits are plenty. It is cost-effective long-term, stable and clean, but initial costs are high

“Geothermal heating has enormous potential,” says Lars Andersen, managing director at Geoop, a Danish geothermal firm. “Ninety-nine per cent of the Earth’s volume has temperatures above a thousand degrees centigrade. If we were to start from scratch and build a whole new energy system, a lot more would be based on geothermal heat.”

Geothermal heating is extracted from hot water found underground. Temperatures near the crust of the earth are not very high, however. Heat from the earth’s core flows to the crust, cooling by about 25°C for every kilometre nearer the surface. Areas near tectonic plate boundaries and volcanic activity have the highest temperatures.

RING OF FIRE “Basically, it is the Ring of Fire, where the continental plates lie, where you see by far the biggest potential,” says Andersen, referring to the horse-shoe shaped area in the Pacific Ocean characterised by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Iceland, too, fits the bill with 14

its many volcanoes and hot springs, which can reach 100°C or more. Indeed, geothermal energy meets the heating and hot water requirements of most of the country’s homes.

“But you cannot transfer experiences from one place to another if you don’t have the same underground conditions and temperatures,” says Brian Vad Mathiesen, energy professor at Aalborg University, underlining that geothermal conditions in Iceland are “completely different” than in Denmark.

Geothermal resources are used in more than 80 countries, though primarily for electricity generation, with only a limited number of countries using them for heating. In 2017, geothermal heating produced a modest 14.1 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe), compared to more than 400 Mtoe of heat produced by bioenergy and renewable electricity, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). The share of geothermal heating is forecast to rise to 20 Mtoe in 2023, when bioenergy and renewable electricity will generate 485 Mtoe of heating, the agency says.

FORESIGHT

TEXT Karin Jensen PHOTO Simon Matzinger - Unsplash

THE HEAT SOURCE BENEATH OUR FEET

MARKETS

Suðurnes, Iceland In March 2019, the Bill Gates-backed fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures announced $12.5 million in funding for the Swedish company Climeon, which is developing technology to use low-temperature heat to make geothermal more economically viable. Climeon works with Icelandic energy operator Varmaorka

China and Turkey accounted for 80% of geothermal heating consumption in 2017. Rapid growth in China accounted largely for nearly a doubling of that consumption globally from 2012 to 2017. Turkey benefits from being located in an active tectonic area. In China, studies have identified more than 3000 hot springs and more than 300 geothermal fields have been investigated and explored, says the World Energy Council.

Globally, most geothermal heat is used for bathing (45%) and space heating (34%). The technology is widely applied in agriculture, primarily to heat greenhouses, in some countries, such as the Netherlands, which is now the fourth-largest user of geothermal heat in the agriculture sector after China, Turkey and Japan, says the IEA.

HEATING PARIS In Europe, new geothermal heat installations are mainly focused on district heating. In the EU, nine plants came into operation in 2017, adding 75 megawatts thermal of new capacity in France, Italy and the FORESIGHT

Netherlands. “There is real potential for geothermal heating in Europe. I think it may be even bigger than heating from solar energy if we exploit it properly,” says Vad Mathiesen. A realistic guess is that geothermal heating can be the source for 10-15% of district heating, he adds.

Many European countries have excellent geothermal sources, but lack the district heating infrastructure needed for geothermal to be cost-efficient. How big a part geothermal will play in district heating “depends on the sources available and the investments you are willing to make”, says Vad Mathiesen. “It is not a new technology and many places in Europe have really good experiences [of it].”

He cites Paris as a positive example. The French capital has used geothermal heating for 30 years and subsidies were the driver, adds Andersen. The city has 34 geothermal heating plants. Heat is extracted from water between 1500 and 2000 metres below ground at temperatures of 55-85°C, says BRGM, a French geological survey institute.

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THE DUTCH ENERGIEWENDE

In the 1960s, over a period of just five years, virtually all Dutch households were connected to the gas grid. Now, they have 30 years to switch off the gas in favour of clean energy technologies. The Netherlands is on the verge of an unprecedented transformation

“All our shops are off gas!” In the last week of 2018, the Dutch subsidiary of German discount supermarket chain Lidl came out with a remarkable public statement: all of its 410 supermarkets in the Netherlands had been disconnected from the gas grid. Over four years, they had swapped gas for heat pumps powered by electricity from renewable energy.

Lidl’s announcement is symbolic of a major transformation taking place in the Netherlands: the country is ending its more than 50-year old marriage with natural gas. It is a shocking change. What coal is for Poland or oil for Saudi Arabia, natural gas is for the Netherlands.

The love affair started in 1963, when the huge Groningen gas field came online. It was one of the largest known at the time and it transformed the energy system in the Netherlands and even much of north-west Europe.

Initially, no one knew what to do with this incredible new resource, until one engineer from ExxonMobil — with Shell one of the two operators of the new field — had the bright idea of delivering the gas by pipeline to Dutch households.

The rest is history. By 1968, virtually all houses 18

in the Netherlands were connected to a national gas grid. And the Dutch gas revolution did not stop there.

The Groningen field also became the cornerstone of the country’s energy-intensive industry and the motor for a massive expansion of the agricultural sector.

Gas-heated greenhouses turned the small country into one of the largest agricultural exporters in the world.

EARTHQUAKES But now the Dutch want a divorce from gas. For two main reasons. One is decarbonisation. The other is earthquakes.

The Netherlands has been slow off the mark in transitioning to a clean energy economy. It has one of the lowest shares of renewable energy in the EU and the government allowed, even encouraged, three new coal-fired power plants to be built as recently as 2015.

It also authorised NAM, the Shell-ExxonMobil joint venture that operates Groningen, to ramp up its gas production to 54 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2013, one of the highest levels since 2000. As a result, the area around the field started to be hit by more frequent and more violent earthquakes.

Until then, the government and the oil companies FORESIGHT

Focusing on energy efficiency and smart electrification to decarbonise the EU energy system by 2050 will be up to 36% cheaper than relying on large amounts of green gas, says a March 2019 report from Element Energy and Cambridge Econometrics

TEXT Karel Beckman ILLUSTRATION Trine Natskår

GOODBYE TO N AT U R A L G A S

MARKETS

FORESIGHT

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SOLAR PV FOR HEATING TOO

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s temperatures in parts of Australia went shooting up past 45°C in January 2019, air conditioners and the country’s significant and rapidly growing fleet of rooftop solar panel were working at full steam. As power demand surged, behind-the-meter rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) installations were credited with helping to significantly reduce peak demand and soften the blow from coal plants breaking down. “Solar delivers when power is needed most, during peak demand on heatwave days,” says the Australia Institute, a think tank.

Over two million Australian households, about 20% of the total, have rooftop solar, and the commercial and industrial rooftop sectors have also posted solid growth. Australia has some 70,000 small-scale commercial and industrial rooftop solar plants, over 20,000 of which were installed in 2018 alone.

“Using solar PV for cooling is easy since peak demand coincides with air conditioning and you produce energy when you need it,” says Jenny Chase from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The storage capability of buildings also means air conditioning can easily be used for pre-cooling hours before the temperature spikes, she adds. And demand for cool-

ing will increase as living conditions in hot countries improve and more people have the means to buy air conditioners, and climate change causes higher temperatures everywhere. Global energy demand from air conditioners could triple by 2050, forecasts the International Energy Agency.

HEAT PUMP POTENTIAL While its role in decarbonising cooling is clear-cut, solar PV — including rooftop installations — may also help to satisfy heating needs, particularly in locations with a relatively high amount of sunshine in winter.

One example is California, where a rooftop solar mandate for new housing will go into effect in 2020.

Supporters of the standards agreed in December 2018 believe they could help set the stage for renewable energy to replace natural gas in space and water heating systems through the electrification of heating, using heat pumps powered by solar PV plants.

Heat pumps can be used for space heating and air conditioning, and for heating water. “What we see for the future is a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions because we will increasingly stop using fossil fuels and because heat pumps use much less energy than FORESIGHT

At the end of 2017, California was the leading US state in installed solar capacity, with solar energy providing almost 16% of its electricity

TEXT Heather O’Brian PHOTO Adrienne Leonard

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Solar photovoltaic has clear potential to help decarbonise cooling and, in some climates, contribute significantly to the energy transition in heating

TECHNOLOGY

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TECHNOLOGY

SOLAR INNOVATION

Naked Energy UK solar tech start-up Naked Energy aims to decarbonise buildings with its eye-catching rooftop solar photovoltaic thermal (PVT) technology Virtu. Combining PV and solar thermal collectors into a single product means significantly more heat and power can be produced than is possible with separate PV and solar thermal installations in the same roof space, says Naked Energy. Its patented vacuum tube technology also does a better job of capturing heat for use in buildings than competing flat panel PVT technologies, says the company. Virtu can typically produce some 40% more heat and power, or energy in kilowatt hours, from a given flat roof area than a separate PV and solar thermal panel, claims Naked Energy. Fixed installation costs per unit of energy produced are also lower, helping to maximise investor returns.

Other PVT technologies on the market also combine power and heating functions in a single product, but they typically have lower efficiency at the higher temperatures needed for solar thermal applications like domestic hot water and space heating. At 60°C Virtu has thermal efficiency, the percentage of available solar radiation converted into heat, of approximately 60%. This is about double that of the flat panel technologies that dominate the market. Flat panel PVT systems must typically be combined with heat pumps or used for smaller applications like heating a swimming pool at 30°C. “Historically, the problem with PVT technology is that it uses flat panels and a lot of heat is lost into the atmosphere,” says Christophe Williams, CEO of Naked Energy. Virtu prevents these heat losses by being housed in a vacuum tube, something Williams says makes it “globally unique”. With Virtu, a heat transfer device also draws heat away from the PV cells, cooling them to a uniform temperature and creating an environment in which power output is maximised.

Naked Energy began operations in 2011 and is in the process of certifying Virtu with German product certification group TÜV for a European Standard for solar thermal and under International Electrotechnical Commission standards for PV, as a PVT standard does not yet exist. Certification is key for plans to scale up production, in part because subsidies and tax rebates for PVT technology are conditional upon it.

Now a small company, with seven staff and three contractors, Naked Energy is also gearing up for a £2 28

million round of fundraising to further advance the technology after raising £1.1 million in its first public crowd-funding programme in July 2018. That will enable it to complete the certification process, build on the existing commercial pipeline for Virtu and bolster marketing efforts.

Initial applications for Virtu, which has been supported by EIT Climate-KIC, a European public-private climate innovation partnership, are seen mainly for commercial and industrial buildings, although Naked Energy also plans to target large-scale applications like district heating in the future. Virtu has seen its first large-scale commercial installation at the Active Office project in the UK, a building designed to generate more energy than it consumes over the course of a year. • FORESIGHT

Nearly two-thirds of Danish homes are heated through district heating. As yet, two-fifths of the heating energy mix still comes from fossil fuels, with biomass making up the rest.

But replace the thermal generators with heat pumps powered by renewable electricity and heating becomes emissions free

T H E PAT H T O E M I S S I O N F R E E D I S T R I C T H E AT I N G IN DENMARK

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crease the role of renewables in provision of heat.

“With more and more electricity coming from renewable sources we should use it in the best possible way, that is in the district heating sector, where you get a high rate of efficiency,” he states.

BIOMASS AND WASTE WATER A large number of Danish district heating plants have, in recent years, been converted to biomass-fired power plants. “Biomass is a transition stage solution,” says Brandelev. “It was fine to use when we decided to move away from coal, but now we must progress to the next stage. And then perhaps use biomass for something better, jet fuel for example.” He points out that when biomass is burned, carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted into the atmosphere.

The first step is to replace the country’s remaining coal-fired power stations, which account for 13.7% of the energy mix, with heat pumps, then the gas-fired ones (22.9%) and finally those that run on biomass, says Brandelev. He cites Esbjerg and Aalborg as two cities where coal-fired plants still power district heating. “We think it is obvious, in both cases, to install heat pumps as the cities are close to the sea,” says Brandelev.

For large heat pumps to work in district heating, a heat source is needed such as waste water, seawater or air. Geographically, many of Denmark’s district heating plants are located almost perfectly, close to FORESIGHT

TEXT Karin Jensen PHOTO Victor Garcia

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istrict heating plants in Denmark produce heat and electricity for 1.7 million households, 64% of all Danish homes. Some 40% of the energy mix in the country’s district heating system is, however, fossil fuels, mainly coal and gas.

With a national goal to be fossil free by 2050, something has to change. The answer is to replace thermal generation with large capacity heat pumps of 20 and 150 megawatts (MW), powered by electricity from renewable sources of energy, says Siemens. ”We have the infrastructure already, it is fully paid for,” says Knud Brandelev, Copenhagen-based sales manager at the German manufacturing firm. “We now need to get electricity from wind turbines into the district heating system.”

Heat pumps powered by renewable electricity are highly efficient. They provide a coefficient of performance factor — the relation between the energy input needed to operate the heat pump and its energy output — of over three and in some cases up to four.

In comparison, today’s energy mix of fossil fuels and biomass in the Danish district heating system has a factor of below one, says Siemens.

“In Denmark, we are really proud that around 45% of our electricity consumption comes from wind turbines. But if you look at total energy consumption, electricity, heat and transport, then it is just 8%,” says Brandelev. “This is not good enough.”

The key to a cleaner overall energy mix is to in-

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The energy mix in Denmark’s district heating today

Biofuels 50.5%

Fossil fuels together make up 38% of the district heating energy mix

Renewable energy 1.9% Heat pumps 0.1%

Biofuels include burning straw, wood-chips, woodpellets and waste, bio-oil, biogas and biowaste

Oil 1.3% Natural gas 22.9% Coal 13.9% Waste, non-biodegradable 8.8%

Renewable energy covers solar and geothermal

Electricity for immersion heaters 0.9%

SOURCE Danish Energy Agency, Energy Statistics 2016: Fuel Consumption in District Heating Production

Renewable energy plays a tiny part

Energy efficiency and heat production Three times more heat from heat pumps than combustion

FOSSIL FUELS AND BIOFUELS

Energy from heating

Loss

21 MW

1 MW Coefficient of Performance (COP)

Delivered heat

0.95

20 MW

ELECTRICITY-DRIVEN HEAT PUMPS Electricity consumption

Extraction of energy from heat sources

13.3 MW

Coefficient of Performance (COP)

Delivered heat at 95°C

3.0

20 MW

The high energy efficiency of heat pumps, typically three times as high as heat from combustion, means district heating plants can deliver cheaper and cleaner heat

SOURCE Siemens

6.7 MW

TECHNOLOGY

The potential to use waste heat from large data centres is limited if computing is not located near where heat is needed. Start-ups are offering innovative decentralised computing solutions in or near homes, offices and other buildings

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FORESIGHT

TEXT Ros Davidson ILLUSTRATION Trine NatskĂĽr

Parisian radiators with brains

TECHNOLOGY

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olutions on the market aimed at bringing together producers of waste heat and their customers include computing heaters and devices containing embedded graphics cards for mining crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin. These ultra-distributed approaches are gaining some traction, but remain niche. This could change as so-called “edge” computing is adopted with computers becoming more common in everyday objects, from refrigerators to self-driving cars.

“Computing everywhere, computing anywhere,” is the mantra of Qarnot, a small company based outside Paris, France, which has developed computing products that generate heat close to the end user.

COMPUTING CAPACITY Qarnot’s computing heater is a unit that can be placed against a wall in a home or office. Rated at 650 watts, pay-back time is about ten years in terms of saved heating bills, says the company’s Quentin Laurens.

About 1000 units had been sold as of February 2019, including to heat a renovated social housing building near the Eiffel Tower and social housing and public offices in the city of Bordeaux in the south of France.

On the other side of the equation, Qarnot has sold the heaters’ computing capacity primarily to big French banks, including BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Agricole, to 3D animation studios — Disney is a client — and laboratories.

Qarnot says it can offer banking clients computing capacity at a rate two to four times cheaper than from more conventional sources because infrastructure is minimal and hardware paid for by heating clients, while helping clients reduce their carbon footprint and meet sustainability goals. France’s ELAN housing law, passed in 2018, for the first time recognises waste heat in national energy efficiency guidelines for new or renovated homes, a potential boon for Qarnot’s business.

The radiators are especially suitable for colder climates such as Finland, where home and office heating is often needed for most of the year, says Qarnot.

If and when heating is not required, one solution is to run the computer’s central processing unit at a lower frequency so no heat is released, says Laurens.

Alternatively, computing can be diverted to Qarnot’s own computing infrastructure or conventional data centres. Qarnot selects these on the basis of whether they use renewable energy.

As for the issue of cyber-security, the data in its units is encrypted and always erased after a computation is concluded, says Laurens. Nor do the heaters store data, minimising opportunities for hacking. Only the banks’ less sensitive computations are conducted in the heaters, such as risk analysis rather than FORESIGHT

high-stakes financial trading, adds Laurens. He accepts hacking is part of the job: “Google gets hacked.

Qarnot gets hacked.”

CANADIAN MINING Data mining is the process used to create digital Bitcoin tokens and is extremely energy intensive, estimated globally to use as much electricity as Singapore. One single Bitcoin transaction has a footprint of almost 200 kilograms of carbon dioxide. This creates a great deal of residual heat, which is already decentralised, having no central bank.

“Clients can receive computing capacity at a rate two to four times cheaper than from more conventional sources” Across the sea in another French speaking city, Quebec, Canada with its cool climate and cheap hydro power, has touted itself as an ideal location for data centres. Success in luring energy-hungry crypto-currency miners to its shores means that as of August 2018 new miners entering the province have to pay C$0.15 (€0.10) a kilowatt hour (kWh) for electricity, around double the rate paid by residential customers.

A good incentive for reusing waste heat.

HEAT MINING One of these companies, Blockchain Lab, offers socalled heatmine units that contain graphics processing units for crypto-currency mining. It partners with buildings needing significant amounts of heating such as churches, greenhouses or warehouses. A unit, placed for free in a partner’s building, is about two metres by two metres by one metre. It contains computer processors and about 100 graphics cards as well as a water heater. The system can provide some 75,000 British thermal units (BTU) an hour, enough to heat a building of up to 300 square metres for 24 hours.

Blockchain Lab pays for the unit’s electricity and uses its computing capacity, in turn charging the partner C$0.35 a kWh (€0.23/kWh) for the waste heat. In warmer months, if less heating is needed, the waste heat can be vented, stored or employed for year-round uses such as warming a swimming pool, says the company’s Benjamin Forte.

One of the most unusual uses of heatmine is in a cricket farm where the insects need constant heat whatever the season. • 43

BUSINESS

Hot cows and heat pumps Large heat pumps can provide approximately 10% of Europe’s industrial heat demand. Big dairies, slaughter houses, breweries, chemical companies and paper manufacturers are obvious candidates because of their significant demand for both heating and cooling. But there are obstacles to overcome

L

arge heat pumps can help decarbonise industrial heat demand in Europe, says the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA), a Brussels-based lobby group. This is around 2000 terawatt hours (TWh) a year, states Eurostat data. “We assessed different temperature ranges and came to the conclusion that large heat pumps can technically provide around 10% of that,” says Thomas Nowak, secretary general at EHPA. Large industrial heat pumps, classified as having a heat output capacity above 100 kilowatts, are particularly advantageous in industries with demand for both heating and cooling, such as dairies and slaughter houses.

“When slaughtering an animal, you get waste heat from the body and you can use that to heat water,” says Nowak. He continues matter-of-factly: “Mammals have a body temperature of around 37°C. Meat needs to be cooled. You can transfer the heat from a room full of dead mammals by air. Then you blow that air over heat exchangers and cool it down. The heat is then inside the refrigerant cycle and can be upgraded, for example to 80°C, and used to warm water for cleaning.”

The same is true of a dairy plant, says Nowak.

44

FORESIGHT

“Every time you cool milk, you can use that energy to make hot water, which can then be used for cleaning and disinfection.” A similar logic can be applied to the production of yoghurt and cheese, where different processes, such as pasteurisation and growing bacteria, take place at various temperature ranges, making it ideal for applying heat pump technology, he adds.

NORWEGIAN DAIRY One company that has taken the plunge is the Tine Ålesund dairy group in Norway. Since June 2018, it has been using heat pump technology to convert surplus heat from district heating into process steam, which is then used by the firm. This has allowed the dairy to replace 12 gigawatt hours (GWh) of natural gas a year with district heating, reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by up to 66%.

It is using machinery created by Olvondo Technology, a Norwegian company, that can increase waste heat temperatures by 100°C up to a maximum of 200°C. Most, if not all, other heat pumps can only provide temperatures up to 100°C. “We are focusing on industries that use very hot water or steam in their processes,” says Roger Myrvang from Olvondo Technology. Helium is used to power its “high lift heat pump”. Helium is “non-toxic, inflammable and environmentally friendly,” says Myrvang, adding that its global warming potential and ozone depletion potential are zero at the point of use. The pump’s potential for saving energy is significant, believes Myrvang. “In Norway, there is a big focus on using excess heat instead of just throwing it away.” The company has received interest in its products from other countries in Europe and as far away as Thailand.

INTEREST AND OBSTACLES Food and drink processes, and the textile, tobacco, paper and painting sectors have the greatest potential to take full advantage of heat pumps as they all involve producing waste heat that can be reused rather than being discharged into the environment. How well such a system would work in practice would depend on several factors such as climate and temperature ranges and the technology applied. “But it is absolutely possible,” says Nowak.

Applying large heat pumps in industry is in its early days. Interest may be increasing, but there are still obstacles to overcome, not least scepticism and a lack of trust in heat pumps, which are still seen by many as a new and unproven technology. “People are not energy traders, they are providers of beer, milk and cheese. Even if we can improve energy efficiency, they may not want to make changes as they do

TEXT Karin Jensen PHOTO Bo Mathisen

INDUSTRIAL HEAT DEMAND

BUSINESS

Tema 45 Dairy processes are heat producers as well as cooling consumers, making them ideal targets for the application of industrial scale heat pumps to transfer energy from the space in which it is produced and feed it to where it is required. Tine Ålesund dairy group in Norway uses heat pump technology to convert surplus heat from district heating into process steam

not want to risk their production process. They do not trust that we can do what we say, they cannot see how it is possible,” adds Nowak.

A lack of best practice examples and the fact many industrial companies have unrealistic requirements for a return on investment, often as little as two years, are hindering progress, says EHPA. The lobby group also wants a more favourable political environment, including a price on carbon and low interest rates and loan guarantees for energy efficiency investments, to encourage a switch to heat pumps.

CLOSED CIRCUITS Danish engineering group Danfoss is ahead of the pack, getting 25% of its heating consumption at its 250,000 square metres headquarters and production facility site in Nordborg in southern Denmark from four large industrial heat pumps. As a producer of key components of the technology, it clearly has a significantly better understanding of it than companies whose core business has nothing to do with energy.

In 2007, Danfoss started a programme to increase energy efficiency at its 26 largest factories globally, which account for 80% of the group’s total energy consumption. Part of the solution was installing the FORESIGHT

industrial heat pumps each with a heating capacity of 500 kilowatts. They deliver 25% of the site’s heat consumption and have helped reduce heat demand by 60% over seven years while carbon dioxide emissions are down by 2700 tonnes a year. “The pumps exploit the surplus heat in our process cooling water,” explains the company’s Torben Christensen.

Surplus heat from pneumatic compressors is also reused in the heating system. “Like process cooling water, compressed air is also used in many industrial production processes and needs to be cooled when running. With the heat pumps we can recover the surplus heat from the cooling water and the air compressors and feed it into our heat system,” says Christensen. “Before we used cooling towers, which meant the heat disappeared into the air. Now we are circulating heating and cooling in a closed circuit.”

The next step will be building a new data centre next to its Nordborg headquarters. From 2019, the servers should provide plenty of surplus heat, which can be used in Danfoss’ own heating system or transferred to the local utility. “Overall, our surplus heat from process cooling, compressed air and the data centre server will be able to cover 50% of our heat demand,” says Christensen. • 45

PHOTO ESSAY

The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country with limited land area, yet it still manages to be one of the world’s leading exporters of food. This miracle is largely thanks to its massive gasheated greenhouse complexes in which flowers, fruit and vegetables are grown. This produce may be a boon for the Dutch economy, but it is a blight on the global climate. As the world pushes to decarbonise energy systems and the Netherlands aims to end its 50-year-old love affair with gas, greenhouse companies and the municipality of Westland are looking for cleaner heating solutions, such as geothermal heat and heat pumps, to reduce the carbon footprint of their tomatoes and tulips PHOTO — Sara Galbiati

SweetPoint is member of DOOR for sales and marketing

tomatoes & tulips

POLICY

He contends that in large parts of the world, where electricity is highly subsidised, it is “just too cheap”.

He says: “If I was only paying $0.2 an hour I’d buy the cheapest most inefficient air conditioner. That is bad for society. Electricity in those cases needs to be more expensive.”

The surge in AC and refrigeration demand has a climate impact beyond its electricity requirement: escalating production of hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs). Used as substitutes for ozone-depleting substances, HFCs are themselves extremely potent greenhouse gases, up to 4000 times more so than carbon dioxide. The Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which came into force on 1 January 2019, aims to tackle this problem.

Under the amendment, all countries will gradually phase down HFCs by more than 80% over the next 30 years and replace them with more climate-friendly alternatives. Developed countries are expected to start reducing their production and import of HFCs immediately, while most developing countries will start their phase down in 2024. Altogether this could save around 80 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050 and avoid global warming of as much as 0.4°C by the end of the century. As a comparison, global annual carbon emissions reached 37.1 billion tonnes in 2018.

Encouraging innovation in air conditioning technology and efficiency is the aim of the Global Cooling Prize launched by a coalition of government and research leaders in November 2018. They are on a mission to incentivise the development of a residential cooling solution with five times less climate impact than today’s standard. Only 14% of maximum theoretical efficiency has been reached by today’s most advanced AC technology (most ACs attain less than 8%), they say.

BUILDING DESIGN Another extremely important, and frequently ignored, means of reducing the demand for AC is through building design and construction. “Architectural standards need to change,” says Dulac. “We need to teach architects to do things differently.”

The desire to have European style buildings in hot climates is not necessarily good for energy efficiency and use, he says, yet “we now see the same buildings everywhere”. He adds: “Giving new commerical buildings glass façades can lead to big heat gains. We need to move towards more traditional means with external shading or more technical measures such as windows that allow little heat to pass through, which are still uncommon in much of the world. These would drastically reduce the need for AC.” Coating single-pane windows can reduce heat gain 58

by 70-90%, but this is only standard practice in a few countries like the US,” says Dulac. “We do not see this happening in Asia, Africa or much of Europe, where it needs to be created at market scale as in the US.” In a similar vein, the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP), set up to support the Kigali Amendment, has launched a $2 million challenge aimed at scaling up the deployment of solar-reflective cool roofs in developing countries. By painting roofs with innovative coating materials, indoor temperatures can be reduced by 2-3°C, helping to decrease demand for air conditioning in households that can afford it and providing a passive cooling solution for the billions who cannot. In addition, local ambient air temperatures can be reduced when all the roofs in a whole neighbourhood are treated, says K-CEP.

URBAN PLANNING Urban planning is also vital to reduce the escalation in AC. Creating urban areas which have irregular layouts could help significantly reduce urban heat island effect, concludes research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, published in 2018. Analysis of layouts of various cities found that those built

“Architectural standards need to change. We need to teach architects to do things differently”

on regular grid patterns, such as New York and Chicago, had a far greater build up of heat than those which follow a more chaotic pattern, such as Boston and London. And international research over the last 15 years gives clear pointers to urban planners to ensure as much greenery as possible. Trees and vegetation in cities cool down the temperature, regardless of whether the greenery is in parks, in streets or on green roofs.

Medellin, Colombia, is one city trying to put this advice in to practice, aiming to reduce the urban heat island effect into 30 green corridors. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is focusing on expanding green areas and restoring polluted rivers to cool the local environment. And in Singapore, green space and shading is being incentivised in new building developments. All three cities are shortlisted for the first ever Cooling for People award run by the Ashden Award, a UK non-profit which supports and promotes sustainable energy enterprises from around the world. • FORESIGHT

POLICY

INDIA PLANS TO KEEP EVERYBODY COOL The energy, environmental and health crises posed by the escalating demand for cooling loom large in India with its growing middle class and increasingly hot climate. Publications from high level energy efficiency advocates and government point to the gravity of the situation for this country of over one billion citizens where temperatures reached nearly 50°C in recent summers.

India’s energy demand from cooling will more than double and tonnes of refrigeration used triple between 2017 and 2027 under a business-as-usual scenario, says a report by the country’s Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE), an industry led not-forprofit organisation. The country has one of the lowest levels of access to cooling in the world. Per capita levels of energy consumption for space cooling are around 69 kilowatt hours (kWh) compared to a global average of 272 kWh.

This figure rises to 1878 kWh a person in the US. “It is the first time the impact of cooling and refrigeration has been done at pan-India level in terms of both energy and greenhouse gas emissions,” says Satish Kumar, president of the AEEE. The publication influenced the government’s draft Cooling Action Plan released in September 2018 and expected to be finalised soon. The plan estimates India’s total cooling requirement will increase by eightfold in the next 20 years with room air conditioners consuming more than half of the total energy required for space cooling by 2037/38.

The idea in the draft of not allowing air conditioning in commercial buildings to be set colder than 24-25°C has incited much discussion in the country.

Increasing the temperature of an air-conditioner by just 1°C can save about 6% of electricity consumption, suggests the government’s bureau of energy efficiency.

The draft plan was criticised by India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a civil society organisation, for being too focused on the personal air FORESIGHT

conditioner market and for ignoring those unable to afford such equipment.

Cooling is a much an equity as a sustainability issue, says the organisation. “About 60% of current space cooling energy consumption is by the top 10% of the population,” it states, demanding thermal comfort for all without an over-dependence on active cooling.

The Indian government is a supporter of the Global Cooling Prize launched in November 2018 by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a US clean energy non-profit, which aims to develop an innovative, climate-friendly residential cooling solution for everyone.

Meanwhile, India’s Ministry of Power has published a new energy conservation code for residential buildings that promotes energy efficiency in the design and construction of homes, apartments and townships. Implementation of the code has the potential for energy savings of around 125 billion units of electricity a year by 2030, equivalent to about 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, says the ministry. • 59

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