District Energy - 2011 1st Quarter

whose economy is fuel-flexible and low-carbon or the city that continues to rely on distant power stations and imported fuels, and pays tipping fees to others for exporting waste? As an industry, it is essential that we alert mayors and planners to the benefits of district energy and position its infrastructure as an integral economic advantage in a sustainable community.

At our upcoming annual conference in Toronto in June, we plan to assemble a group of professionals from around the globe to discuss policies and practices that expand opportunities for district energy. In Canada, Finland, South Korea and Sweden, tax policies and municipal planning has featured approaches such as energy improvement districts (EIDs) to support growth and stimulate community engagement. It will be informative to explore a range of different approaches to more fully inform mayors and community planners on strategies for system development. While federal policy makers may have cooled on the need for legislation to cut carbon emissions in the U.S., across the world many economies are advancing policies to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and increase energy efficiency. For example, Denmark has committed to achieving a fossil-free economy by 2050 through enhanced reliance on district energy that integrates renewables, CHP and waste energy recovery. With a total population of 5.5 million, the country of Denmark is smaller than many of the world’s mega-cities with populations of 20 million or more, but has demonstrated impressive economic growth and environmental progress leveraged by efficient district energy.

Here in the U.S. we are facing
a Sputnik moment while other
countries are actually investing
billions in clean energy.

In today’s legislative and economic
climate on Capitol Hill and across the EU,
programs or policies that hint of “New
Deal” infrastructure investment or gov-
ernment largesse are not likely to survive
committee review or capture meaningful
funding. Competition for capital is fierce,
credit remains overly tight and the mood
for public expenditures is vexing at best.
But here in the U.S. we are facing a Sputnik
moment while countries such as China,
South Korea and Singapore are ACTUALLY
INVESTING BILLIONS IN CLEAN ENERGY. In
order to generate real economic growth,
cut foreign trade deficits and compete for
jobs in the clean energy sector, the U.S.
needs to adopt a more hybrid approach
to public/private partnerships that are suc-
ceeding in these other vibrant economies.
Our global competitors in the new clean
energy economy have deep and deliberate
government support for expanding their
markets domestically and globally. As a
noted economist said, the invisible hand
of capitalism is best balanced by the visible
hand of functional government direction.
Even conservative columnist David Brooks
has decried the swinging political pendulum
that denigrates all government infrastruc-
ture investment as “socialism” when he
posited that the Eisenhower-era investment
in the U.S. interstate highway system was
“certainly not a government plot run by
Bolsheviks.” America’s robust transporta-
tion infrastructure is widely acknowledged
as a critical asset for interstate commerce.
Now’s the time for a renewal of essential
infrastructure for our nation’s cities, includ-
ing water, energy and waste systems.

Today, more than half of the world’s 6. 3 billion people live in cities. By 2050, U.N. research predicts global population will increase to nearly 9 billion people and nearly 70 percent – or 6. 3 billion – will live in urban centers. Taken another way, in 40 years, today’s total global population will have moved virtually altogether into our cities and even mega-cities with more than 30 million inhabitants. In order to support this dense energy and environmental concentration, we will absolutely need thermal energy infrastructure to utilize surplus heat from power stations and convert municipal waste from landfill liability to useful energy. Even today, we can ill afford to throw away two-thirds of the fuel we burn to make electricity, let alone when urban populations have nearly doubled.

We can be encouraged by the tremendous success in increasing urban energy efficiency that IDEA members have already demonstrated in their communities. For instance, UT Austin’s focus on modeling and managing the efficiency of its CHP/district energy system allows it to serve twice as many square feet of customer space today with the same volume of fuel as 20 years ago. District Energy St. Paul has shown similar results, now serving twice the customer square footage as it did in the 1980s with the same fuel volume, and its switch to renewables has also cut urban CO2 emissions by nearly 240,000 tons per year. In Toronto, Enwave’s investment in lake water district cooling reduced peak power demand by 90 percent and cut emissions equivalent to taking nearly 16,000 cars off the road.

These real-world cases demonstrate that district energy is not only proven, readily available and highly effective; it is essential infrastructure for a sustainable city. Our challenge is to educate a range of audiences on the near-term potential for district energy and direct finite resources where we can achieve the greatest benefit for our members. If half the world is moving to cities, maybe we should too.