District heating is the future

At the moment district heating is one of the most environmentally friendly and inexpensive heating solutions, but there is technology available that can make it even cheaper, more efficient and accessible to more Danes, according to the Danish national newspaper Jyllands Posten today.

Right now some 60 percent of Danish homes – equivalent to about 1.6 million homes are connected to the district heating network.

But according to Marianne Bender, who heads the energy service Energitjenesten Nordjylland, it would be good to get the numbers up to around 80 percent.

“The future district heating will be the most environmentally friendly form of heating,” she says.

The technology to streamline the district heating network already exists, but that is not where the problem lies, says Marianne Bender. If we had the economy and the will, it could be introduced within a few years or three”, she says.

The reason that the technologies have not been introduced is that the future looks uncertain for the plants that deliver the heat. Much of the district heating comes as a bi-product of electricity generation, and the plants’ existence is dependent on electricity production. But in recent years, Denmark has invested heavily in imports of electricity and production of renewable power from e.g. windmills.

“The plants do not know what their future is going to look like. We do not know how many CHP plants we need in the future,”explains Marianne Bender.

The uncertain future of the plants means that they are hesitant to invest in new technology.

Source: The Danish District Heating Association