Why is district heating innovation so important in our fight against climate change?
Heating is responsible for 37% of the UK’s carbon emissions
The impact that heating has on our carbon emissions is hard to ignore and requires urgent attention. But many businesses and communities have been left wondering what the answer to the problem is. A transition to circular decarbonised energy consumption has left many sectors looking towards district heating as an affordable, reliable and sustainable solution to the heating and cooling of homes and buildings.
Driving Ecological Transformation Through Innovation
Veolia has a unique interest in developing innovative solutions that both improve or succeed current district heating solutions. We explore ways to utilise existing resources and turn them into beneficial sustainable energy sources.
1. Recovering Waste Heat From Data Centres:
Data centres are reliant on optimal temperatures and humidity ranges to function at peak efficiency. To achieve this desired environment, data centres must be enabled with the option to ventilate, cool, humidify and vice versa. Obviously, such extreme levels of cooling, ventilation and so forth require extensive amounts of energy, levels much greater than your average commercial building.
We, Veolia, see an opportunity to support data centres by recovering and utilising their waste heat within district heating networks, therefore increasing the energy efficiency of the operation. Recovered heat from data centres is a unique opportunity to supply heat back to the neighbouring communities where they are located whilst helping the data centre operator to cool their assets at the same time.
Veolia can help by:
- Helping data centre developers achieve planning permission through the design of community district heating solutions
- Supporting data centre operators to cool their operations via the exchange of heat for district heating provision
- In house heat exchanger and heat pump experts
- District heating pipework design, installation and operation
2. Unlocking Wastewater Heat Resources:
Wastewater heat is currently a relatively untapped heat resource that if utilised correctly can be a key solution in our transition to net-zero. While water companies may not be a first thought when considering heat sources, they are uniquely placed to deliver a sizeable quantity of renewable heating resource.
Veolia has a long tradition in wastewater treatment plants and has specialist technologies/knowledge on how to recover waste heat from these unique assets. This reduces primary energy consumption, generates energy from local resources, is readily available, and efficiently repurposes the energy produced.
3. Utilising Heat Pumps:
Heat pumps are a quick and cost-effective way of reducing your carbon footprint, without increasing your energy costs. Heat pumps work by extracting energy from the surrounding ground, air or water, and transferring it from one area to another. In a process similar to a refrigerator or air conditioning unit, extremely cold fluid circulates through tubes in the heat pump’s external network. This is then vaporised and compressed to generate heat.
Our heat pump solutions team can design, install and operate your heat pump systems ensuring the solution is both implemented and maintained correctly. Not only can we integrate heat pumps into your existing heating infrastructure, but we can also power them using innovative renewable electricity solutions.
4. Commercial Heat Exchanger Cleaning:
Heat exchangers often suffer from sediment build up, but cleaning a large quantity can be a significant cost to your operations due to production downtime.
Our technology-driven solution promises a precise and efficient clean that’s up to five times faster than traditional methods, so you can get back up and running as soon as possible.
Get in Touch
If district heating appears to be a viable route for you then we strongly urge that you seek out expert knowledge and advice to ensure your network/scheme is built and managed to provide the highest levels of efficiency.