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About half of the EU’s final energy consumption goes to heating, making it a key focus area in Europe’s efforts to improve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing, published this week, analyses this energy segment, urging investment in building renovations and modern renewable energy solutions. Renovations and…
Marine Cornelis examines rising energy poverty in Europe – and what consumers can do about it.
How can households be sustainably protected against rising energy prices and lifted out of energy poverty? Energy poverty already has dramatic social and health consequences for 50 to 125 million Europeans.
Due to the gas and electricity price crisis and soaring inflation, many more people might feel the cold and must make terrible trade-offs, such as having to choose between buying schoolbooks and clothes or feeding their kids.
Citizens across Europe are concerned about their heating bills as a result of the energy price crisis, but sustainable heating and cooling do not yet receive much attention in the EU’s agenda
Copenhagen will start supplementing its natural gas supply with biogas produced domestically from locally generated food waste. This approach can alleviate the Nordic country’s reliance on fossil ener..
This week, authorities in Vienna announced that Wien Energie, the city’s energy company, has set up heat pumps in one of the natural thermal water pools in the Austrian capital. Said pumps will collect heat from wastewater and feed it back to the district heating system, providing green energy for 1,900 households in the Oberlaa district.
To curb climate change, we must transition to renewable and sustainable heating. In the EU, more than three-quarters of all the energy households consume is used for heating and hot water1 — and fossil fuels generate
most of this heat. We need to reduce heating demand by insulating our homes better, and drastically improving the efficiency of the appliances we use. It is time for a switch to electric heat pumps and solar heating.
On 5 May, the Danish Parliament officially approved a new law, allowing the country’s 98 municipalities to ban the use of wood-burning stoves and fireplaces produced before June 2008 in areas with district heating or natural gas. In doing so, the government hopes to significantly reduce air pollution and decrease the number of deaths caused by it.
The cities of Munich and Vienna partner on sustainable and climate friendly energy sources with a particularly look at geothermal for heating.
In October, the UK government released two different strategies on how to achieve its net zero emissions target by 2050 – the net zero strategy and the heat and buildings strategy. Although both look at how to decarbonise the UK’s economy, they also both overlook an important feature of the future of energy consumption – the demand for cooling.
The Energy Community Secretariat launched a Discussion Paper on how the heating and cooling sector can contribute to decarbonisation in the Energy Community. The Paper provides insights into different policy options to support the development of heating and cooling and district heating sectors, based on the assessment of National Energy and Climate Plans of seven EU Member States. The focus is placed on possible regulatory and financial solutions for the integration of renewable energy in the heating and cooling sector.
The UK government has published its Heat and Buildings Strategy, a plan to replace fossil-fuelled heating like gas boilers with low-carbon technologies such as heat pumps.
First the good news. This is a comprehensive and groundbreaking strategy that flags a range of complex issues involved in solving a problem like decarbonising heat. These include insulating buildings to reduce energy demand, renewable heating systems that are cheaper to run as well as to install, the benefits of boosting local manufacturing, and how the sector will provide thousands of jobs over the next 25 years.
EESIP, the European Energy Social Innovation Platform, is designed with one purpose in mind: to empower and support professionals in the renewable energy sector specifically working on social innovation and citizen engagement.
This platform enables professionals not only to gather information and knowledge, but also to share good practices and new resources and work collaboratively.
Renewable energy will be produced on-site and it will power the entire facility
Vienna is opening a new educational campus called Lieselotte Nahsen-Schmidt in Seestadt. Said campus will have a comprehensive renewable electrical and heating system, making it a showcase project for the whole sector of educational architecture in the carbon-neutral future of Europe.
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Excess heat produced across Europe could almost power the entire region but preventing this waste is largely being ignored as a solution to the energy crisis, say environmental experts.
Across Europe, rising temperatures, combined with an ageing population and urbanisation, mean that the population is becoming more vulnerable to heat and that demand for cooling in buildings is rising rapidly. Buildings, as long-lasting structures, can offer protection from heatwaves and high temperatures if appropriately designed, constructed, renovated and maintained. The summer of 2022, with its successive long heatwaves and high energy prices, may have raised the sense of urgency given to the alleviation of heat stress. But there is a gap in knowledge on the extent of overheating in buildings and data and information is scarce regarding the share of EU citizens unable to keep their homes comfortably cool during the summer. This briefing examines key elements of sustainable cooling policy, and its potential impacts on vulnerable groups, by reducing health risks, inequalities and summer energy poverty.
Vienna’s Seestadt Aspern district is getting an innovative sustainable office complex that will not need a heating system. Instead, the building will make use of thick brick walls to retain natural bo..
Helsinki is tapping an unexpected source of energy to heat its homes: cold water extracted from deep in the Baltic Sea.
The Finnish capital is joining Europe’s rush to find new sources of energy and reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels with a new, carbon-neutral heating system.
Tthe Regional Government of Castile and Leon and the Valladolid City Council have signed up an agreement that will allow the creation of the third biomass heating network in the city. The 'West Valladolid' Sustainable Heating Network project, whose first works will go out to tender today, is scheduled for commissioning for the 2023-2024 heating season.
In concrete numbers, the “West Valladolid” will supply heating and hot water to 10,200 homes and 67 buildings in the neighbourhoods of Villa del Prado, Parquesol and the southwest area of Huerta del Rey. It will involve a total investment of 30 million euros plus VAT and the creation of 72 jobs. It will also save users between 30% and 50% of their energy bill, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 31,300 tons of CO2/year and increasing the energy independence of Castile and Leon.
Ground and air source heat pumps are expected to play a major role in cutting the use of gas for heating. But one major problem with them is that they need a lot of space. For those living in dense housing it’s just not practical. District heat networks are the usual alternative, but the dense urban areas they serve need to be near a large source of waste heat like power stations or other industrial units. David Barns at the University of Leeds looks at Shared Ground Heat Exchanges as another solution. Here, a set of shared boreholes draw heat from the ground, sufficient for a single street. Each house would only need a small heat pump similar in size to a conventional gas boiler. The business model will need service providers to coordinate with the street householders and the local authorities, and get their consent before making the investment in the shared system.
Viennese authorities have said that they will invest over 1 billion euros in sustainable energy in the next five years. The funds will go towards renewable projects with an increased focus on hydrogen and especially geothermal energy.
Rising temperatures are leading to a surge in demand for cooling. But, ironically, the more we rely on energy-intensive air conditioners, the more the planet warms. Natalie Muller and Neil King discuss the options in an article on the Deutsche Welle website. Climate emergency: Keeping homes cool on a warming planet In many places,…
L’urgence climatique est là et les réseaux de chaleur associés aux nouvelles technologies et aux ENR sont un des leviers de la décarbonation du chauffage. Avec la moitié des consommations d’énergie, la production de chaleur française est encore insuffisamment décarbonée. La France a décidé de multiplier par 5 la quantité de chaleur et de froid renouvelables entre 2012 et 2030. Alors les projets, les actions se multiplient avec en ligne de mire le succès danois !
The City Council’s ban will come into effect from June 2023, offering a transitional period to change the legislation and heating method
Judging by WHO guidelines, the air quality in Lithuania is considered moderately unsafe, with fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations exceeding the recommended maximum, especially in the summer (June to August) and winter (December to March). The main culprits are thermal power plants and vehicle emissions, but also a growing number of households that find burning coal and peat for heating cheaper than using gas or electricity.
Charleroi mise sur un plan de rénovation énergétique déjà en cours. En effet, plusieurs zones de la ville au passé industriel sont en cours de réurbanisation et la Ville veut en profiter pour évaluer le potentiel énergétique de ces zones afin de permettre la planification de réseaux qui permettraient de gérer au mieux les flux d'énergie. D'autre part, les autorités communales ont analysé les potentielles sources d'énergies locales et renouvelables offertes par leur territoire. La région dispose en effet de certaines ressources liées à son passé minier. Le potentiel géothermique découlant de l'ancienne exploitation minière de la région est très important et proche du centre-ville. De plus, le gaz de mines, aussi appelé grisou, s'accumule dans certains puits de mine et pourrait être utilisé pour générer assez de chaleur et d'électricité pour alimenter plusieurs milliers de ménages. La Ville de Charleroi envisage également de produire de l'énergie via la valorisation de la biomasse, qui consiste à utiliser les déchets de bois issus du secteur de l'industrie ou des recyparcs. L'hydrogène et le solaire sont aussi évoqués comme sources d'énergie possibles. Afin de répartir ces flux d'énergie à travers la ville, Charleroi mise sur la construction de réseaux de chaleur, un système qui permet de distribuer à l'échelle d'une ville la chaleur produite par plusieurs chaufferies, situées dans des endroits différents, via des canalisations.
According to a preliminary estimation, the new solar park will meet around 15% of the annual heating requirements of citizens of Friesach. The thermal power that the plant will generate will be fed into a 10-kilometres-long pipe, powering the district’s heating network.
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