On the 19th of January, the SHIFFT project hosted the online event ‘The role of cities and municipalities in the heat transition’ with a very succesful turnout: up to 95 attendees all over Europe. The event was moderated by Visuality EU, ensuring a smooth and visual experience during our online event. Their Visual Changemakers took care of live graphic recording of all sessions, capturing the presentation in each session in one drawing.
The event kicked-off with Peter Connor, Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy at the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus and scientific coordinator of SHIFFT Project. Peter researches and teaches in national policy for the effective promotion of renewable energy technologies and their integration into increasingly smarter grids. He presented the on-going work on a common approach for developing sustainable heating strategies for partner cities, developed within SHIFFT project. The common approach sets out some of key elements of a sustainable heating strategy and provides a roadmap for how to develop and implement one in any local area. Read more about the methodology and download the report: https://shifftproject.eu/publications/
We then heared the story of four cities and municipalities in their quest to decarbonize the heating and cooling of their building stock: Fourmies from France, Brugge and Mechelen from Belgium and Middelburg from the Netherlands. Via break-out rooms, participants got the chance to connect with the city administration and experts in the field of sustainable heating of each city and municipality involved.
The session ended with a keynote from Tom Prinzie, technical manager at Van Marcke and vice-president of sector-federation Warmtenetwerk Vlaanderen. Tom knows what it takes to roll-out district heating networks in the built environment. He discussed the Transition towards district Heating in Belgium with main challenges, on-going developments and future prospect (more information is available in the following publication http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8590818). Furthermore, he shared his experiences from a concrete case he was closely involved in: the district heating network realised in the Flemish town Kuurne.
Many thanks to all speakers, moderators and off course the participants. All presentations and recordings are available on our website.
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