Lessons from Denmark's thriving district heating sector

District heating accounts for 10 per cent of the heat supply in the European Union, yet the concept is still strange to many across the region. Instead of distributing gas to individual household boilers, district heating or heat networks take the heat from a centralised location and transport it through insulated pipes to homes and businesses. In Denmark, a global forerunner in this technology, most people are familiar with it, and the municipality of Nyborg is a good example: 65 per cent of its 32,000 inhabitants have access to the district heating system run by the local utility company, Nyborg Forsyning & Service.  

“About 95 per cent of the heat we use comes from surplus heat,” said Jimmy Jørgensen, heating manager at Nyborg Forsyning & Service. “We have 8,850 customers and most of them are households, but we also distribute heat for industrial purposes, mainly for food production.”

Nyborg receives excess heat from local industries that include a chemical plant and a wastewater treatment facility. It is the site of one of the pilots where the EU-funded R-ACES project will test waste heat management tools it has developed to create ecoregions . These are industrial areas where businesses collaborate, exchanging excess energy flows to reduce emissions. Nyborg’s high rate of renewable energy sourcing and the large-scale participation of locals in the district heating system make it a good example of how to bring heat networks closer to residents and local businesses.