👥🏭 Connecting to a heating network

France currently has 723 district heating networks (and 28 cooling networks), most of which are located in major urban centres. This heat mainly supplies residential and commercial buildings (91%) and heats around six million people.

Connecting individual homes to a heating network is still rare, but not impossible.

To find out where to get information and how to connect, see this article.

It is assumed that the action is only applicable to flats heated via a collective gas network. In the case of private individuals, it is preferable to work with the co-owners of a building, as individual dwellings are not a priority target for this type of solution is not a priority target for this type of solution, both for reasons of economic profitability and because the thermal density of the network would be too low given the size of the dwelling density of the network would be too low given the consumption of an individual dwelling.

A district heating network is a system of pipes used to distribute locally-produced heat to a group of buildings produced locally, mainly from renewable and recovered energy sources, to a group of buildings.

It is an ecological and economical alternative to gas or oil-fired boilers, for both collective housing (condominiums, social housing) and commercial buildings.

However, being connected to a heating network is not as simple as taking out an electricity contract. The feasibility of connection depends on a number of technical conditions.

First of all, the connection is for an entire building: it is not possible to connect just your flat. Secondly, you need to check that there is a heating network close to the building, and then study the heating infrastructure in the building (a building with a communal heating system will allow you to connect at a lower cost)

In terms of the impact on the climate, it's important to know that, in general, a heating network is supplied by local renewable or recovered energy sources (62% on average nationally), i.e. from household waste incineration, biomass combustion, geothermal energy, etc. (as shown in the figure below) which considerably reduces the CO2 impact of the kWh of energy consumed, ahead of gas or fuel oil.

However, the energy mix varies greatly from one network to another, and some networks are still mainly powered by fossil fuels (coal, fuel oil, gas). It is therefore important to check the renewable energy rate of the nearest network on the France Chaleur Urbaine map, and to find out from the network operator about future changes in the energy mix, as many networks are in the process of becoming greener...].