Needs-Challenges-Barriers-Opportunities

Urgent Needs/Challenges

No changes in the legislation direct on DH, but the lack of system perspective in the building codes has to be changed.

The rules for CO₂-taxtion giving industry lower tax then DH, even thou it is just for heating must changed.

Due to lack of confidence from the customers we need some form of price review, in order to give the customers a forum for the impartial price assessment.

Increased freedom of trade for municipality owned companies. The same playing field for private and public companies. Remove localization principle, which prevents local companies doing business outside the municipality

The most challenging issues are the future demands of heating. The energy efficiency work will decrease the need for heating and together with the lack system approach the district heating can lose customers. It is due to this very important to convincing policy-makers to change in order to avoid suboptimation of the energy system.

A second very important issue is convincing new customers and in the long run ensuring customer loyalty. Expansion of district heating for the existing customers may feel that they must subsidize new customers. The reason is that the new is often small detached houses, which are more expensive to connect than the large existing properties

Main Driving Forces

District heating is perceived a simple, safe and sustainable with high resource efficiency and it works. DH uses sustainable, renewable energy sources such as energy from waste, surplus heat from industry and electricity production. DH utilizes losses from other businesses

Main Barriers

In the legislation no barriers, but there are very good local alternatives in heat pumps, backed up by the building codes due to lack of the system perspective.

To many and unclear signals from regulating bodies questioning the function of the heat market. The possible introduction of TPA, price regulation disturbs the expansion of the DH because the fact that the DH industry is very capital intensive and in need of long term commitment, even though it is a low risk industry.

No, through contractual arrangements the combination of heating forms both within the same building and within a building stock is prevented by the district heating supplier. In this way the property owner is prevented to use other energy sources together with DH.

Electricity, read heat pumps, based solutions is favoured in for example the national building codes/regulation but also in the EU regulation where the low temperature heat used in geothermal heat pumps is considered renewable even though it is just a matter recovering the losses from the production of the electricity based on fossil fuels.

Competition is difficult because of several factors. The competitors like electricity are taxed directly at the customer while DH taxed at the output which makes price comparisons a disadvantage for DH. There is also a mutual dependency between customer and companies which does not exist for the competing alternative. District heating is long term and collective, while competition is short term and individual. District heating requires a system approach, while competitors benefit from a narrow local view

Main Opportunities

District heating has a strong position in the heating market in Sweden. All stakeholders believe it is an important part of the sustainable urban infrastructure. District heating is considered with its nearly fossil-free energy supply as one of the main contributors. Willingness to and trend in the construction industry is today, unfortunately, local solutions, where only the house's energy consumption are counted. Our hope is that we can convince the authorities and other responsible parties to a systems approach is preferable, where district heating can connect energy sources, including houses with excess heat during periods over the year.

In order to meet the decreasing demand for heat the district heating sector are working together with the construction industry to develop solutions for energy efficiency that is suitable for district heating. These solutions can be combinations of heating and solar panels, for example at a customer's roof. When the surplus generated in the solar array can be distributed through the district heating network to other clients. As a complement the technical solutions developed contracts and pricing structures to enable this new business.