# District heating and cooling networks

Insulated pipes carrying hot water, steam or chilled water across a town or industrial park.

Source page: https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/

Transport · Heat, motion and embodied energy · No. 64

- Transport
- Form: Heat
 Transport · Heat, motion and embodied energy · Foundation · Energy

Europe's 17,000 heat networks pump hot water through nearly 190,000 km of pipe to about 70 million people.

Chart: Illustration: District heating and cooling networks

##### Where it comes from

Chart: Map of where it comes from

Central plants make heat with boilers, waste heat from power stations or large heat pumps, then pump hot water through buried, foam-insulated steel pipes to every building.

##### Three things to know

1. Running the same pipes at 55/25 C instead of 80/45 C would cut heat loss by about 43%.
2. Coal-based winter heating north of China's Huai River raised PM10 by about 41.7 micrograms per m³, shortening lives.
3. Manhattan's steam system runs about 169 km of pipe to about 1,555 customers, the largest district steam system in the US.

##### The journey

1. 1 **Heat plant**Boiler, CHP waste heat or heat pump
2. 2 **Hot water**Supplied at 50-120 C, by generation
3. 3 **Insulated pipes**Steel in foam, buried under streets
4. 4 **Substation**Heat exchanger warms the building's own water
5. 5 **Return**Cooled water flows back for reheating
 Covered in [Moving energy: wires, pipes and shipsEnergy](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/moving-energy/)

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## Other sections

- [Overview](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/overview/index.md)
- [Correlation](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/correlation/index.md)
- [How it works](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/explain/index.md)
- [Efficiency and losses](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/efficiency/index.md)
- [Technology advances](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/advances/index.md)
- [Value chain](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/valuechain/index.md)
- [Geopolitics and regulation](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/geopolitics/index.md)
- [Unit economics](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/economics/index.md)
- [Impact on the biosphere](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/biosphere/index.md)
- [Relationships](https://www.materialinsights.org/energy/e_district_heat_net/links/index.md)