Ontario Community Energy and Climate Working Group

This month the Ontario Community Energy and Climate (ON-CEC) Working Group is pleased to welcome Poul Alberg Østergaard, a professor in energy planning at the Department of Sustainability and Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark. Poul holds a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in energy planning – the latter with particular focus on integrated resource planning and the organisational structure of the energy sector.

Denmark has had a remarkable development in deploying community-owned district energy systems. Presently, approximately 65% of the Danish heating demand (space heating and domestic hot water) is supplied through district heating systems ranging in size from large systems supplying major cities like Copenhagen down to systems supplying a few hundred houses. While the larger systems typically date back the 1960s or 1970s and are municipality-owned, the smaller systems have developed over the last 40 years and are frequently owner by the residents through a cooperative.

In this presentation Poul will present a brief overview of the Danish energy system before delving into the smaller community-owned district energy plants, how they developed, which factors contributed to their development – and how the area has developed since the original cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) units to a much wider variety of energy sources being exploited today.

So mark your calendar for Thursday, April 11, 10:00am – 11:00am, and please share this meeting notice with any colleagues or others in your network who may be interested in joining the working group.

Questions or additional information? Don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected]

To join the ON-CEC Working Group, please contact [email protected]