Economic Tradeoffs Between Energy Conservation Measures and District Heating in a Large US City

摘要

An examination is made of the economic implications of applying end-user conservation measures to buildings that are served by a proposed district heating system in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. End-user conservation is a demand-side conservation strategy typified by changes in building operating procedures and changes in the building shell. District heating with cogeneration is a supply-side conservation method that allows scarce fossil fuels to be more efficiently converted into thermal and electrical energy. Technically these two conservation methods can be applied simultaneously to a densely populated urban are such as Minneapolis-St. Paul, but the implementation of one tends to reduce the economic feasibility of the other. This analysis suggests that building coservation measures will be difficult to justify economically in buildings that are connected to the proposed Minneapolis-St. Paul system. (ERA citation 07:047284)