Climate Index for District Heating System

2020
Ieva Pakere, Dace Lauka, Kristiāna Dolge, Valdis Vītoliņš, Ilze Siliņa, Stefan Holler, Dagnija Blumberga

District heating (DH) has been highlighted as an important part in future carbon neutral energy supply. However, the performance of different DH systems varies a lot and the existing regulations do not always motivate DH companies to move toward more sustainable heat production. Therefore, this article presents novel methodology for Climate index determination which can be further used for the comparison of DH systems. The Climate index includes seven different indicators which show DH system performance according to energy efficiency, sustainability and environmental impact dimensions. The methodology is applied for 20 different DH systems operating in Latvia. The results show that the performance of 5 natural gas-based DH systems is below the determined climate benchmark.

Keywords
Benchmarking, district heating, energy efficiency, sustainable heat supply
DOI
10.2478/rtuect-2020-0024
Hyperlink
https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/rtuect/24/1/article-p406.xml

Pakere, I., Lauka, D., Dolge, K., Vītoliņš, V., Poļikarpova, I., Holler, S., Blumberga, D. Climate Index for District Heating System. Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2020, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 406-418. ISSN 1691-5208. e-ISSN 2255-8837. Available from: doi:10.2478/rtuect-2020-0024

Publication language
English (en)