A Chinese City Rethinking How to Meet Energy Needs

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Rapid urbanisation is opening up tremendous and lucrative opportunities within cities for a cross section of green industries, like wastewater treatment and waste and raw materials recycling.

Autor*in Louisa Wong -, 05.08.14

Rapid urbanisation is opening up tremendous and lucrative opportunities within cities for a cross section of green industries, like wastewater treatment and waste and raw materials recycling. At this year’s GreenTec Awards, held on May 4 in Messe Munich in Germany, there were more than 50 intelligent urbanisation exhibitors presenting their innovative solutions for the challenges of urbanisation. Here, I introduce you to some SMART initiatives that tackle these problems head on.

A special prize in the category Intelligent Urbanity was awarded to the Anshan District Heating Energy Efficient Surplus Heat Utilization Project. Supported by the State government in Anshan and designed by one of the largest industrial companies in Denmark, Danfoss, the project aims to develop a district heating renovation system that is believed to improve the livelihood of four million Anshan citizens by reducing CO2 and harmful particles emissions. The new district heating system will be delivered over a period of three years until 2016.

According to the project specifications, the new district heating system will use non-utilised waste heat from a local steel plant as a primary heating source and substitute coal-powered heat generation to a wide extent. The heating system will enable Anshan to cut energy consumption and reduce its CO2 emissions by up to 240,000 tonnes annually.

The city of Anshan is located in the northeastern part of China and has 3.5 million inhabitants. It is estimated that 1.8 million will benefit from the district heating. The northeast of China was marked out to become a major industrial centre for China. Thanks in part to the steel mills industry, the city is well-known for its air pollution problems and smog caused by large amounts of dust created by the steel mills.

As addressed by the President of District Energy, “the district heating system as a solution will enable Anshan to deliver a significant environmental improvement for residents and paints an exciting picture of how District Energy can help city leaders rethink energy and the economy”.

Our world needs innovative pathways. As Margaret Mead’s famously said: ‘A small group of thoughtful people could change the world’.  If you have great ideas and are willing to commit yourself to them, never doubt that. Even small citizens like us can make a better sustainable world!

Want to learn more about other nominated project of Intelligent Urbanity? Check of the official website of GreenTec Awards 2014.

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