Arras, a city 175km North of Paris, implemented a heat recevory project through renewable energy investment as part of the City long-term strategy for energy reduction. Veolia uses the heat of the city’s waste-water and sewage networks to heat the air and water at a public aquatics centre through a technology called Energido. The new technology is providing 80% of the energy required to heat the public swimming pool and the Centre’s indoor air. This stabilises the cost of energy for the municipality and enables the municipality to save financially, approximate €40,000 per year. Additionally, the return on investment is currently forecast to be <9 years and it will decrease as a carbon tax on natural gas increases. FInally, the reliance on fossil fuels by the aquatics centre are reduced by 80% each year through this renewable energy system, resulting in about 230 tonnes of CO2 per year no longer being released into the atmosphere. Matching the rate of the production and consumption of heat energy has been a challenge, especially as the aquatics centre is a constant user of heat, but the project has so far been proven successful.

Photo by Brian Matangelo on Unsplash