Amsterdam aims for district heating future

Amsterdam is aiming to end its reliance on natural gas by 2050, replacing it with various forms of district heating.

CityLab website reports that the city authorities have already begun to implement their objective with 10,000 new public housing units this week having their gas supplies removed, with various district heating options taking its place.

By 2020, 102,000 Amsterdam homes will have switched from heat created in their homes to heat created at a central facility and supplied by a pipeline, saving considerable energy in the long run by creating a single generating point where fuel is burned. This creates efficiencies of scale that ultimately make the same amount of fuel go further.

It also makes for lower emissions and the city is engaging with various agents to utilise waste heat from industry as a solution. Already, 70,000 of the city’s homes are warmed with water heated at a central waste incinerator. The plan is to roll this concept out further to tap into other sources of waste heat.

In addition heat pumps are being planned for new homes on new artificial islands along with solar water heaters.

The Netherlands are, according to CityLab, motivated by the need to retain energy independence from Russian gas, as well as the problems caused to building structures by domestic gas extraction.

Source: Decentralised Energy