If you happen to have a nice option like deep geothermal, that’s good. Biofuels are not really renewable, but you would have better exhaust scrubbing than in residences.
In Germany this is rare, here the push was for heat pumps. Assuming you don’t have to renovate buildings (most legacy can’t deal with lower fluid temperatures, and might also need reinsulation) a heat pump needs sufficient power cabling, is an expensive piece of hardware with a limited lifespan, needs periodic servicing and has frequently problems in lower subzero temperatures. Also, if the grid is down, you’re SOL.
District heating allows a city to use industrial waste heat, from factories or data centres. It is also a lot easier to add storage in form of large insulated water tanks to the system. At that point you can add thermal solar to the mix and also just fairly simple large boilers(those are pretty close to 100% efficient and a lot cheaper then heat pumps).
As for geothermal, that too is an option in quite a few parts of Germany, if you go deep enough:
Also obviously large heat pumps are always an option as well.
If you happen to have a nice option like deep geothermal, that’s good. Biofuels are not really renewable, but you would have better exhaust scrubbing than in residences. In Germany this is rare, here the push was for heat pumps. Assuming you don’t have to renovate buildings (most legacy can’t deal with lower fluid temperatures, and might also need reinsulation) a heat pump needs sufficient power cabling, is an expensive piece of hardware with a limited lifespan, needs periodic servicing and has frequently problems in lower subzero temperatures. Also, if the grid is down, you’re SOL.
District heating allows a city to use industrial waste heat, from factories or data centres. It is also a lot easier to add storage in form of large insulated water tanks to the system. At that point you can add thermal solar to the mix and also just fairly simple large boilers(those are pretty close to 100% efficient and a lot cheaper then heat pumps).
As for geothermal, that too is an option in quite a few parts of Germany, if you go deep enough:
Also obviously large heat pumps are always an option as well.