RBC report highlights municipal benefits of district heating
August 7, 2024 | By HPAC Magazine
Report outlines the significant impact that general and low to zero-carbon district heating systems can have on the municipal level.
RBC’s new report includes five policy recommendations on promoting the adoption of district heating for municipalities. (Photo: RBC)
A new report from RBC’s Climate Action Institute, titled Climate Briefing: A Smart Heating Solution For Canada’s Fiscally-Strained Municipalities, focuses on the significant impact that general and low- to zero-carbon district heating systems can have in municipalities’ struggles against growth, fiscal and climate demands.
In meeting sustainability and emission reduction demands, the report states that scaling district heating systems could lower the building sector’s emissions across Canada’s largest cities by 36 per cent, based on research from RWDI, the Climate Smart Building Alliance and the Climate Action Institute.
For fiscal challenges, the report cites district thermal systems, a subset of district energy systems, as an enticing solution. District thermal systems pose a number of benefits, including the facilitation of low to zero-carbon thermal grids, increasing the pace of building decarbonization and a lack of burden on municipal finances.
In municipally-owned systems, district thermal systems provide a new revenue stream that can be tapped into without new legislative authority; generating building-level revenue through a variable charge for thermal energy consumption and a fixed charge for the system capacity volume required to heat a building.
Given these outlined benefits, the report outlines five supply and demand policies that can increase the scale and adoption of district heating systems by municipalities. These recommendations include:
- The introduction of mandatory connection by-laws;
- Promoting district heating integration in new projects;
- Recognizing and rewarding adoption;
- The creation of a strategic energy plan;
- Encouraging the development of district energy-ready buildings.
“Against this backdrop, low to zero-carbon district heating systems, and in general district energy systems, are emerging as a fiscal and climate tool that municipalities are deploying to tackle their growth, climate and fiscal trilemma,” Myha Truong-Regan, author of the report, says. “The low-carbon neighbourhood systems have the potential to lower building emissions by just over a third in Canada’s biggest cities, according to our research.”
