Yearly, EU-28 conventional thermal generating plants reject a greater amount of energy than what ultimately is utilised by residential and commercial loads for heating and hot water. If this waste heat were to be used through district heating networks, given a previous energy valorisation, there would be a noticeable decrease in imported fossil fuels for heating. As a consequence, benefits in the form of an energy efficiency increase, an energy security improvement, and a minimisation of emitted greenhouse gases would occur. Given that it is not expected for heat demand to decrease significantly in the medium term, district heating networks show the greatest potential for the development of cogeneration. However, to make this happen, some barriers that are far from being technological but are mostly institutional and financial need to be removed. The purpose of this review is to provide information on the potential of using waste heat from conventional thermal power plants (subsequently converted into cogeneration plants) in district heating networks located in the EU-28. For this, a preliminary assessment is conducted in order to show an estimate of the cost of adopting an energy strategy in which district heating networks are a major player of the energy mix. From this assessment, it is possible to see that even though the energy strategy proposed in this paper, which is based on a dramatic increase in the joint use of district heating networks and cogeneration, is capital-intensive and would require an annual investment of roughly 300 billion euros, its adoption would result in a reduction of yearly fuel expenses in the order of 100 billion euros and a shortening of about 15% of the total final energy consumption, which makes it of paramount interest as an enabler of the legal basis of the “Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy” future enacted by the EU-28 Horizon 2020.

中文翻译：

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欧盟28国的区域供热和热电联产：推广的现状，潜力和拟议能源战略

每年，EU-28常规热电厂所消耗的能源要比住宅和商业负荷最终用于取暖和热水的能源要多。如果将废热用于区域供热网络，再考虑以前的能源价格调整，则用于加热的进口化石燃料将显着减少。结果，将出现以提高能源效率，提高能源安全性以及最小化所排放的温室气体为形式的收益。鉴于预计中期内热量需求不会显着下降，因此区域供热网络显示了热电联产发展的最大潜力。但是，要实现这一目标，需要消除一些远非技术障碍，而主要是体制和财务障碍。这篇综述的目的是提供有关在EU-28的区域供热网络中使用来自常规热电厂（随后转换为热电联产电厂）的余热的潜力的信息。为此，进行了初步评估，以显示采用能源战略的成本估算，在该战略中，区域供热网络是能源结构的主要参与者。从该评估中可以看出，尽管本文提出的能源战略是基于区域供热网络和热电联产的联合使用而显着增加的，但它是资本密集型的​​，每年将需要大约3000亿欧元，