Roadmap to the Deployment of District Heating in Ireland

➢ Institutional Level: at institutional level, the main driving forces, awareness about district heating technology and benefits, ownership challenges, legal frameworks, pricing of the networks and knowledge development have been analysed in the European context (Werner S., 2017)

- Driving Forces: the main driving force for adopting district heating systems has been recognised at international level as the abatement of primary energy supply at heat level. From the consumer's prospective, the main attractiveness for district heating is the advantage of not having the responsibility for purchasing the boilers and the relevant fuel supply.

Another important driving force for the development of district heating is also the lower fuel costs where the district heating technology adopted is very efficient, like in the last generation of DH, and when the source of heat connected to districted heating systems is exhausted heat from large industrial facilities or a renewable heat source. (District heating systems based on a renewable source are analysed in the following session of this Domain 1, Technical Level). In fact, district heating systems have been traditionally less attractive when the fossil fuel prices were low. A very interesting statistics about this fact is that the number of academic articles about district heating in scientific energy journals is directly proportional to the international crude oil price (Frederiksen S., Werner S., 2014).

Some countries, particularly in Scandinavian region where district heating has been successfully developed, have proposed extra driving forces at legislative level, like in Denmark (Chittum, A., Østergaard P.A., 2014) with a robust national heat planning and high fossil fuel taxation as well as Sweden (Di Lucia L., Ericsson K., 2014), with very high fossil fuel taxes.

- Awareness: at international level, the share of academic publications neglecting awareness on district heating is very high. The main advantages from district heating are not easily identified in international energy statistics where generally the energy allocation is based on the first law of thermodynamics and, by doing so, the principal advantage of district heating as lower primary energy supply is greatly underestimated. One of the first publications on the subject at that recognises the importance of district heating European level is from UNECE (UN-ECE, 1956), affirming that 'Governments should study on the international as well as on the national level the results of experiments on district heating, and its possible extension taking in account all the factors involved.'

- Ownership: the nature of ownership for district heating infrastructures differ depending by the region and country. Municipal ownership has been adopted in Europe since its implementation stage due to the strong local business interests in the benefits of district heating. Sometimes, though, limited financial resources and lack of tradition and experience at municipal level have precluded the successful development and optimal utilisation of existing district heating networks.

- Legal Framework: the legal frameworks on which district heating systems base their marketing conditions also can largely differ depending on the region or the country. Some countries European including Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Lithuania have establish specific district heating laws while other countries, like Finland, France, United Kingdom and Ireland just adopt general energy laws for the use and diffusion of district heating. Generally speaking, third party access have not been enabled to equal level as electricity and gas network due to the fact that these networks are developed at national and international level while heat networks are developed at a local level.

- Pricing: as early stated, the main driving forces for the adoption of district heating are cost oriented thus information on pricing of district heating would be very useful. Due to the fact that national statistical authorities usually do not gather this information on district heating, aggregated information on district heating prices is not available in traditional energy price reports.

- Knowledge development: the first international research project on district heating is the IEA-DHC technology collaboration programme. This project started in 1983 and since then this international research has produced circa 80 research reports. In recent years the existence of European project on district heating is becoming more evident, as shown in Figure 4. Annual average financial resources spent in district heating research project in Europe. [...]