This kind of district heating is much more common in Europe, and fairly uncommon in the US
instead of flammable and planet-warming gas, those pipes will carry water or other liquids that transfer heat from underground — or from other buildings and sources in the network — that can be used by heat pumps to keep buildings warm.
Heat pumps, which operate like reversible air conditioners, are much more energy-efficient than fossil-fired furnaces or boilers. They’re even more efficient when they can exchange heat and cold with fluid at a stable temperature, rather than from cold outside air, as the more common air-source heat pumps do.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that ground-source heat pumps reduce energy consumption and emissions by up to 44 percent compared to air-source heat pumps and 72 percent compared to standard air-conditioning equipment.
I didn’t know anything about this but it’s truly amazing - it really should be the case that all new utilities in any area that meets the right criteria should be required to provide heating in this way.
As it stands, utilities are basically public in the US entirely (correct me if I am wrong), and it is even the case that many people complain that it’s so regulated that they have to sell their green energy back to the utilities company instead of using it themselves… There really should be no barriers for making it a necessity for utilities companies to go this route.
Electric and gas utilities in most of the US are private for-profit enterprises subject to state regulation. There is a patchwork of municipal utilities as well, but they’re a much smaller part of it. Some areas have fairly extreme examples of regulatory capture, where the regulators are more or less working for the for-profit utilities.
Water utilities are mostly municipal, though a few are privately owned.
You’re wrong. Utilities are not public here. Your recent Elon Musk/billionaire fellating comments explain why you’d be naive enough to think they are public.
I apologize - I have not lived in the United States for 20 years, and I thought of them as public utilities that are provided by private companies that exist to fill the niche and are granted something of a monopoly. Like, a town will have one natural gas and electricity supplier, as I seem to recollect, and, of course, everything about it is regulated. It’s not socialistic, but it is also not really to be understood necessarily as the free market in any conventional sense of the word.
I apologize if my remarks on Musk were offensive! I did not intend to do that.
It’s ok. I’m just on edge because of the economic violence and austerity I experience from day to day being a citizen of the United States. You didn’t do anything wrong other than fall prey to the narrative that corrupt oligarchs have pushed on wage slaves like myself.
That’s really rough - I know it can be bad out there. I have a friend who needed to be crowdfunded a new pair of glasses and I felt like… “This is such shit.” Particularly because both of his parents have died and he has no support network… There are a lot of issues out there, and… while we disagree on a lot… I am certainly sorry to hear about anyone’s financial problems…
I’ve experienced poverty a little… Not a lot, and I still had a safety net I hadn’t quite hit, but like… I know enough that I am very glad it never got really bad. And so I can say it really is traumatic and scary, and it can feel humiliating. I hope new opportunities come your way and that you can break the chains.
Thanks. You’re a really kind person. 😊
