INVESTING IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN BUILDINGS WITH DISTRICT HEATING

District heating (DH), an important source of domestic heat for a number of EU Member States, is often praised as an efficient, clean and cheap technology with significant potential for carbon emissions mitigation. In Central and Eastern Europe, DH systems often perform poorly because of inherited inefficiencies and heat costs are a burden the household budgets of domestic users. In that context, significant energy cost savings and additional co-benefits can be realised through a large scale, deep retrofit of buildings connected to DH, especially if the conditions under which DH is served are also improved. In the long-term, however, the future role of the DH industry may to be reevaluated if nearly-zero energy buildings become the norm, as presently legislated in the EU, and consequently the demand for domestic heat is drastically reduced. 1. Introduction: district heating (DH) in an EU context 1.1. Diverging perspectives in an evolving EU District heating (DH) has been often celebrated as a sustainable and environmentally friendly way of providing heat to buildings (IEA/OECD, 2009). Indeed, if the heat produced in high-efficiency cogeneration power plants (combined heat and power, o