District Cooling : A Sustainable Response to Europe’s Rising Cooling Demands

Speaker: Mr Roelof Potters, NUON

There is an ongoing shift of structure in the supply of energy. For different reasons, there is a steadily growing demand for air conditioning or comfort cooling both in the North and South of Europe, mainly in commercial and institutional buildings.

Traditionally, comfort cooling is based on electricity to run the individual appliances. Rising cooling requirements during summer reinforce summer peaks – touching capacity limits and thus increasing the risk of outages. Should traditional cooling continue to grow at its current rate in Europe, it will require a substantial expansion of electricity supply. Such a massive effort would of course induce additional strains on the environment and climate, on the economy and on urban design.

Pär Dalin will present the essentials of District Cooling as an alternative route allowing to convert this potential threat to the environment and to electricity supply infrastructure into opportunities for the energy business, its customers and society.