Status and Perspectives of Italian District Heating and Cooling in a Changing Market

Abstract

District Heating (DH) served more than 170 municipalities in Italy in 2014; most of them are in the northern regions. DH delivers space heating to about 315 million m3, thanks to 4000 km of networks. The average growth rate of this service is more than 7% per year, since 2000.
Natural Gas represent more than 70% of the Primary Energy used to operate DH systems, while coal has a marginal role and other fossil fuels are negligible. The heat recovery from Waste-to-Energy plants represents the second energy source, followed by bioenergy, mainly in the form of biomass.
Both Waste-to-Energy recovery and bioenergy are rapidly growing in the recent years, thanks to the European and Italian policies. Conversely, the huge potential of geothermal and solar thermal are still inadequately exploited in Italy (only about 1% of Primary Energy), due to the high up-front investment costs and the technical inexperience, respectively.
Beyond the birth of new DH systems, a major boost to the development of the sector is given by the partial conversion to renewable sources also for systems born with fossil fuels as the only energy source. In this paper, we give some examples of this positive trend.
Finally, DH systems have still a large potential to grow in Italy. Recent European directives and strategies highlight the importance of its spread, but it is often hampered by national decrees and technical standards.