Sustainable district heating system: A multi-actor perspective

Sustainability, addressing climate change and energy scarcity problem, is one of the most complex issues that the world will face in this century. This complex issue should be approached at two fronts - one by increasing the energy efficiency (demand side) and on the other hand promoting the usage of renewables (supply side). Usually, there is an agreement among all stakeholders about sustainability, but the disagreement is about 'how to achieve that.' There are numerous good projects lying on shelves due to stakeholders' conflict of interest. This paper proposes a multi-actor analysis and modeling approach as a way forward to systematically study the system and actor dynamics, in order to garner cooperation from all relevant actors and get the sustainability projects started. A case that studies the feasibility of using residual industrial heat for sustainable district heating system (DHS) is used. The City Municipality is the initiator of the DHS project. There are very few triggers for other relevant stakeholders to participate in the project. The Municipality, therefore, needs to design an attractive business proposal to get all the relevant actors onboard and build a sustainable DHS.