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District Heating

District Heating

Description

Ireland’s heating sector faces huge challenges in terms of decarbonisation - we are almost completely reliant on gas and oil, yet in Dublin, power plants and large industries are releasing huge amounts of waste heat into the atmosphere and we have a large amount of untapped geothermal and solar thermal opportunities; collectively, there are enough waste heat and renewable sources to heat over 1 million homes in Dublin!

District heating provides an innovative, local-level solution that allows us to decarbonise heat while also integrating more renewable electricity.  District heating systems create a local-level heating (and, if required, cooling) grid which delivers low-carbon heat to residential, commercial and public buildings. These systems are widely used across Europe, and supply 90pc of all heat in sustainable cities such as Copenhagen and Stockholm.

At Codema, we are recognised as leading experts on district heating in Ireland, and we are proud to be working with the Dublin Local Authorities to bring the first district heating schemes to the region, from early feasibility stages, right through to funding, procurement, contracting and promotion.

The services that we provide for district heating include:

  • Spatial heat demand and source analysis
  • Business case preparation
  • Detailed financial appraisals
  • Funding applications
  • Contract development
  • Procurement strategy
  • Communications and marketing support

District Heating Potential

As the maps below illustrate, there is huge potential for district heating in the Dublin region, with enough renewable and waste heat sources to heat the equivalent of over one million homes and over 70% of Dublin's homes suitable for district heating.

 

Ongoing Projects

The Tallaght District Heating Scheme (TDHS), which will begin construction later in Spring 2021, will be the first large-scale scheme in Ireland, and will use waste heat from a local data centre to heat South Dublin County Council’s public buildings, as well as other residential and commercial buildings in the Tallaght town centre area.

In the Dublin City area, Codema is also part of the Dublin Docklands District Heating System (DDHS) project team, advising on policy, energy planning, technical aspects and energy procurement/contracting. The DDHS project will use waste heat from the nearby Waste-to-Energy plant, and has the potential to supply low-carbon heat to up to 50,000 homes in the area when the project is completed.

To support these projects, Codema has played a key role in helping to secure €24.5M in total through the Government’s Climate Action Fund, and the TDHS is also supported through the Interreg North-West Europe ‘HeatNet’ project, which we are leading.

We are also a member of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications' District Heating Working Group, which was officially established in November 2017. The aim of the group is to develop a policy framework to encourage the development of district heating, and to identify opportunities for developing this low-carbon heating infrastructure across Ireland.

If you would like to learn more about developing a district heating scheme in your region, contact our Energy Systems Analyst John O'Shea at john.oshea@codema.ie. You can also learn more about district heating by checking out our HeatNet NWE Guide to District Heating.

Benefits of district heating include:

 

Watch our CEO Donna Gartland talk about why 4th generation district heating and cooling systems are so important for Ireland