Integrated heating and cooling supply: Final conference in Berlin

❄️🔥For three years, IREES GmbH and ifeu – Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg gGmbH have been working on findings on cooling networks for the German Federal Environment Agency – yesterday, these results were presented to the public for the first time. The central question: How can heating and cooling supply be sensibly combined?

Cooling networks are still not as well known as heating networks. However, they offer great potential: particularly when heating and cooling planning are considered together, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and efficiency increased by relying on networks instead of decentralised solutions.

Daniel de Graaf from the Federal Environment Agency chaired the final conference in Berlin on 17 February. Jan Steinbach, Dr Jakob Metz, Helena Stange and Sophie Lohmann, PhD presented the key project results: simulation results on expansion potential and energy savings were discussed, as were recommendations for action by policymakers to promote the expansion of cooling networks.

Exciting insights into market developments and practical examples were provided by Mario Ragwitz from Fraunhofer IEG on large heat pumps, Moritz Ammann on the local heating and cooling network of IKB – Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe AG, and Thomas Wicht from ExerGo on innovative heat and cooling carriers.

🚩 As a practical outcome, the project team has developed guidelines to help better integrate heating and cooling planning. These guidelines and the final report will be published in the coming months – we will provide updates here on LinkedIn and via the channels of the German Environment Agency.

IREES – RESEARCH FOR FUTURE 🌍🍃