Europe’s industries and transportation systems waste so much heat that capturing the excess and reusing it could save consumers more than €67 billion ($71.3 billion), a Danish engineering company said.
(Bloomberg) — Europe’s industries and transportation systems waste so much heat that capturing the excess and reusing it could save consumers more than €67 billion ($71.3 billion), a Danish engineering company said.
The surplus produced each year by factories, supermarkets, wastewater facilities, data centers and subways amounts to 2,860 terawatt-hours, nearly the same as the European Union’s total demand for heat and hot water in residential and service-sector buildings, Danfoss A/S said.
The excess supply is “the world’s largest untapped source of energy,” the chief executive officer said.
Boosting energy efficiency is viewed as essential for the bloc in coming years to assure a more secure — and more green — energy network. Utilizing waste heat would help with the transition to carbon neutrality since the process doesn’t require burning new oil, gas or coal.
“It’s not energy we need to produce; it’s energy we need to reuse,” CEO Kim Fausing said in an interview. “It can be done with technology we have on the shelf already today.”
Using excess heat in combination with other efforts to reach net zero could save €67.4 billion annually by 2050, according to the research by closely held Danfoss, which produces heating and ventilation systems. In urban environments, the surplus would be transferred into a district network to warm a central water source for heating nearby buildings.
An analysis of individual cities by Danfoss found that Greater London’s heat waste amounts to 9.5 terawatt-hours per year — enough to warm 790,000 households if recaptured. Berlin’s total is 4.8 terawatt-hours.
Meanwhile, 50 sites in the industrial city of Essen, Germany, generate enough waste energy to serve half of its domestic dwellings. In the Netherlands, the excess heat supply would be greater than the total demand nationally.
District heat networks are part of urban planning across Europe, with almost 90% of Stockholm’s buildings connected to a heating and cooling grid. Germany has drafted legislation mandating that data centers reuse 30% of their excess heat.
Germany Wants to Reuse Data Centers’ Heat. No One is Buying it
Still, decarbonization of heating in Europe and the UK, where the older housing stock is especially drafty, will be a major challenge as the continent’s systems remain heavily reliant on gas.
“We need to make decisions now on what will still be an appropriate technology in 50 years,” said Catherine Bale, an associate professor at the University of Leeds researching urban energy systems. “The transition from fossil-fuel systems to low-carbon heat systems is critical.”
(Updates with comments in final paragraph. A previous version corrected the company name.)
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