Harnessing waste heat could save Europe US$71bil

Recycling heat: People look at a liquefied natural gas cargo vessel at Barcelona’s port. Boosting efficiency is viewed as essential for Europe as it moves towards a more secure, and more green, energy network. — Reuters

LONDON: Europe’s industries and transportation systems waste so much heat that capturing the excess and reusing it could save consumers more than €67bil (US$71bil or RM317bil), a Danish engineering company says.

The surplus produced each year by factories, supermarkets, wastewater facilities, data centres 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 Energy said.

The excess supply of heat is “the world’s largest untapped source of energy,” the firm’s chief executive officer (CEO) Kim Fausing said.

Boosting energy efficiency is viewed as essential for the bloc in the coming years to assure a more secure, and more green, energy network.

Utilising 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,” Fausing said in an interview. “It can be done with technology we already have on the shelf today.”

Using excess heat in combination with other efforts to reach net zero could save €67.4bil (US$72bil or RM319.9bil) annually by 2050, according to the research by 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 heating 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 centres reuse 30% of their excess heat.

Still, decarbonisation of heating in Europe and the United Kingdom, where the older housing stock is especially drafty, will be a major challenge as the continent’s systems remain heavily reliant on gas. — Bloomberg