Figure 3. Steam Delivered in 2004 by Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain, as
Produced by Various Fuel Sources. The graph illustrates the proportion of steam supplied from
each of four fuel sources throughout the year. The system is baseloaded with waste-fired steam;
cogeneration provides the next greatest level of steam supply followed by coal-fired steam; and
oil-fired steam provides the balance of supply.
Source: Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain.
MMlb PER DAY
154 Oil
Coal
132 Cogeneration
110 Waste
Incineration
88
66
44
22
0
01/01/2004 12/31/2004
STEAM DELIVERED IN 2004
refuse incineration plants owned by
SYCTOM, a domestic waste processing association serving several local
town councils in the Paris urban area.
CPCU buys steam produced by
these three incineration units and
feeds it into its district heating network. In 2004, nearly half of the steam
distributed by CPCU, more than 3. 8
million metric tons ( 8,377 million Mlb),
was produced in SYCTOM incineration
centers; approximately 4. 7 million
metric tons ( 10,362 million Mlb) were
generated in CPCU’s own district heating plants.
Seventy-six percent of
the heat supplied by
CPCU is produced using
‘clean’ technologies.
sulfur heavy fuel oil (with less than
0.55 percent sulfur content).
Between 2000 and 2004, CPCU’s
various efforts to minimize its environmental impact resulted in significant reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions – decreasing sulfur dioxide
levels by 62 percent, NOx by 46 percent, dust by 81 percent and CO2 by
19 percent.
Looking ahead, the company has
plans to expand its network and services
beyond Paris. In October 2005, it began
operating a new 130 MW ‘substation’
in Vitry; construction is under way on
another 20 MW substation located near
the new François Mitterrand National
Library in Paris’s 14th District.
As referred to in Paris, a substation is a facility that uses steam to
generate hot water, which is then circulated to new customers on the network. The substation consists of a
heat exchanger with
steam on
But utilizing steam from waste is
not the only way CPCU helps protect
the local environment. Aware of the
environmental impact of its operations, the company has taken many
measures to prevent and reduce pollution. It supports the environmental
charter of the SUEZ group, and all its
production centers are monitored to
meet the requirements of the ISO
14001 standard. CPCU is, in fact,
considered among the ‘greenest’ dis-
trict energy systems in Europe. Fully
76 percent of the heat supplied by
CPCU is produced using ‘clean’ technologies – 50 percent through the
incineration of waste and 26 percent
using cogeneration.
The company’s two cogeneration,
or combined heat and power, plants
supply more than 1 million MWh of
electricity to the heart of Paris. The
Saint-Ouen cogeneration operation
started up in March
2001 and the Vitry
plant, in November
2001. These systems, which burn
natural gas, have an
overall energy efficiency rating of 85 percent.
In 2002, CPCU further
cut emissions by
installing a nitrous oxide
reduction system on the
Saint-Ouen plant combustion turbine.
By providing electricity
through cogeneration instead of traditional power production methods,
CPCU’s CHP plants prevent the release
of more than 400,000 tons of carbon
dioxide each year. The company closely monitors all emissions discharged
from its plants, ensuring their compliance with emission levels set for the
Paris area. To help achieve these levels,
CPCU burns low-sulfur coal and low-
Gare du Nord, major train station in Paris, CPCU customer.
one side and
circulating water on the other
side. The substation contains pumps
that pump the hot water to customers
who have secondary heat exchangers
and pumps within their buildings. The
system hot water then returns to the
substation to be reheated.
The addition of three other loops
to the system is also under study. As
CPCU grows, it anticipates that European
and local environmental regulations
will become more restrictive. Therefore
