By Khatia Shamanauri and Fintan Burke
When trying to establish demonstration sites for their renewable district heating and cooling (DHC) systems, researchers in one EU-funded project spent months meeting local requirements and administrative challenges. Their challenges are emblematic of a wider challenge facing European researchers.
Europe is setting high goals for renewables in heating and cooling buildings. Chief among them is supplying heat to buildings through a network, known as ‘district heating.’ Last year, the European Union’s revised Renewable Energy Directive put pressure on EU countries to increase its share of district heating and cooling by on average 2.2% each year until 2030.
However, the European researchers helping to reach that goal are repeatedly held back by vague and uncertain local laws.
In 2019 the EU-funded WEDISTRICT project started to search for sites that could demonstrate its fossil-free district heating and cooling technologies. They wanted to show that district heating and cooling systems can be built using both renewable energy sources and waste heat recovery technology.
They expected there would be technical challenges, and spent considerable resources finding potential and selecting the most suitable sites to demonstrate their technologies. Eventually, they selected four demonstration sites in Spain, Romania, Sweden, and Poland.
But as the project unfolded, it soon became clear that local bureaucracy could jeopardize these demo sites. After encountering many obstacles the demonstration site in Poland was withdrawn, while the one in Spain had to be entirely replaced.
Three alternatives
“I expected more technical problems than the actual ones we encountered,” says Krzysztof Skowroński, a director of the district heating transformation department at the Polish National Energy Conservation Agency.
Attempts to get approval for a demonstration site in Poland was emblematic of the project’s wider problems. Their first choice at Kuźnia Raciborska clashed with the local spatial development plan. This plan restricted where renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic panels and geothermal heating plants can be placed. While they could have made changes to their application, it would have been impossible to plan and get approved within the project’s lifetime.
Local plans also doomed their second demo site at Bierutów, which required a contract between the heat supplier and the housing association. However, reaching an agreement was hard as the housing association demanded long-term guarantees of low energy prices and additional ownership conditions. As a non-profit, time-limited EU research project, this was impossible for Krzysztof and his colleagues to guarantee.
Their third choice at Sejny again clashed with the region’s development plan, while another alternative at Dzierżążno required approval by the heating company’s supervisory board and local land owners.
“Small sites are usually located in the city center, and you might encounter problems related to the ownership of the land. The owner can be the local community, and decisions must be made collectively, which often takes a considerable amount of time for discussions.”
Krzysztof Skowroński, Polish National Energy Conservation Agency
Skowroński says that local decision makers, given the choice focused on maintaining energy prices than investing in financially unproven, complex renewable energy systems.
Few of these people were even aware of such EU-funded research projects, meaning they were naturally wary of giving their approval. The project found itself each time at square one, explaining the public good of their research and why they needed certain permits. With precious months already spent on applications, the Polish demosite was ultimately suspended.
But elsewhere other problems lay ahead for the project.
No specific regulations
In the Spanish city of Alcalá de Henares, problems with vague regulations and commercial worries hindered the project further. “I would not have imagined that we would encounter these problems, they were totally unexpected”, says Jon Martínez, the WEDISTRICT project coordinator.
According to Martínez, despite a welcoming attitude from local authorities, a major issue was obtaining the license to build the power plant and set up the district heating network in the first place.
Colleagues in the project spent months providing all the necessary technical and legal documents to prove the project followed local regulations, only to find the Alcalá municipality could not approve licenses unless the compliance with requirements and regulations is 100% clear.
In other words, even if local authorities were enthusiastic, they cannot approve district heating projects unless they have specific regulations for them. With little information on such research projects, the Alcalá City Council was also wary that the project might become a commercial one.
”In such cases, they choose not to issue the license at all”, says Martínez. This, the project would learn, is especially true in countries with limited experience in district heating networks.
Even after 30 months of work, Martínez and his colleagues were not able to get the permits necessary to build the demo site. As a result, Martínez says the project used the facilities already available at the University of Córdoba. This settled any concerns about the project becoming commercial, as the university site is focused only on research. Although some administration still slowed them down, they were finally able to do their tests.
Lessons for the future
“What I’ve learned is that you cannot wait for the municipality’s response for 12 months. We need an answer, and if you don’t get it in time, you have to go for an alternative. We were too optimistic, but I believe in this kind of project, it’s better to be realistic and move fast in the process.”
Jon Martínez, WEDISTRICT project coordinator
He says that allowing more time to gather necessary documents is crucial. Involving public administrations in the project consortium can speed up the approval process for licenses, although he says it may not entirely resolve the issue.
Working on four different demo sites in Poland over a long period of time also taught Krzysztof Skowroński major lessons. A recurring theme he encountered in all locations was the lack of information for decision-makers. Unless local and European laws adapt common standards for district heating experiments, local administrations will continue to be burdened with making legislative decisions with little national or EU guidance.
Likewise, researchers in EU projects will spend needless months applying for permits and licenses, procurement procedures and making sure contracts are airtight to satisfy any doubts from authorities.
He says that other researchers working in other EU research projects are encountering the same issues, even as the European Commission continues funding new initiatives to transition to cleaner energy.
Skowroński says this transition should also include communicating with local authorities, and giving them the legal certainty to approve such demonstration sites. “I think that we need to work with the local stakeholders and in general with the politicians. We should persuade them that transitioning to renewables is the right path. We should modernize our heating systems to get rid of the coal and gas,” he says.
This article has been published on 15 February 2024 in SmartCitiesWorld.