British newspaper lauds Finnish district heating

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In its recent article the prestigious British newspaper The Times turned its attention to the Finnish district heating system, which comes in for considerable praise.
     
District heating, common in finnish cities, is a heating system in which water is heated centrally at combined heat and power (CHP) plants and piped directly to homes and public buildings.
      The article admires how the ”clever” Finns have all their heat ”on tap”, while in Britain people generally own a domestic heating boiler.
     
The writer finds the Finns’ efficient use of energy amazing. The energy produced centrally at CHP plants is converted into either electricity or hot water for district heating.
      ”It's a fantastic system,” agrees Marko Riipinen, the director of district heating at Helsingin Energia, the municipal utility that operates the system for the capital.
      “It's highly efficient, environmentally friendly and the price of heat is comparatively low”, Riipinen adds.
      According to The Times, 50 per cent of the energy produced in British power stations burning coal and gas is routinely lost as heat.
     
The paper also argues that the Finnish district heating system is a model system that Britain could copy, as the country aims to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent by 2050.
      However, Marko Riipinen points out sagely that such a district heating system would require a large pipeline infrastructure, the building of which began in Helsinki already in the 1950s.
     
Britain has been considering the development of CHP and district heating for years, but progress has been slow, partly because the fitting of the country’s ageing housing stock with the new equipment would be technically complex and very expensive.
      The article is linked below. It has already apparently been found by a number of Finnish readers, some of whom complain at the writer's flamboyant suggestion that Helsinki routinely experiences temperatures down to -30°C in the winter.
      The last time we reached such Arctic levels was probably in January 1987, when it duly made headlines.


Links:
  The Times: Helsinki has all its hot water on tap (15.4.2009)
  Helsingin Energia
  District Heating (Wikipedia)

Helsingin Sanomat