EcoHeat4Cities

Establishment of a voluntary green energy labelling scheme for district heating and cooling

Summary

Ecoheat4Cities is a European project that aims to address the non-technical barriers that are currently impeding the wider uptake of District Heating and District Cooling (DHC). Such barriers are

• The DHC sector is considered as rather obscure as it is difficult to make comparisons with other heating and cooling option;
• The local character of DHC and diversity of schemes make it difficult to make project assessments and to justify, devise and measure the effect of policies;
• Customers are generally not aware of the (energy) performance and environmental benefits of DHC.

Description

Ecoheat4Cities aims to promote the acceptance of district heating and cooling systems through the establishment of a voluntary green energy (heating and cooling) labelling scheme. By establishing a label that recognizes the energy efficiency and renewable share, and providing this information to local politicians, citizens and potential investors, the project aims to enable them to make renewable energy and energy efficiency based choices. The criteria of the label will be defined so that they allow for easy comparison with other heating and cooling methods, as well as respective existing and/or future labelling schemes.

The project has been broken down into 6 work packages, each lead by one of the project partners, in accordance to their specific expertise and know-how. The department of Building Technology and research institute OTB cooperate as project partner and are responsible for work package 5. This package targets cities and will provide guidance on the relevance and applicability of the established labelling methodology for wider purposes.

For more information on the Ecoheat4Cities project, visit www.ecoheat4cities.eu