CELSIUS’ experience with replication and communication and what made their approach successful

We asked the Project coordinator of CELSIUS Katrina Folland to tell us briefly about their experience in replication and communication by formulating three key learnings and how they managed to put these into practice within the CELSIUS project and make it a success.

1) CELSIUS is a network that generates an interest and brings all different district heating and colling (DHC) stakehold­ers together.

• The network includes 5 partner cities with 20 partner organisations, 50+ CEL­SIUS Member Cities and a growing number of CELSIUS City Supporters.
• The CELSIUS Toolbox is collating and presenting the project results in a way that will support the 50+ and continuously growing CELSIUS city network. All the knowledge, research and expertise generated within the project are pre­sented in a user-friendly, accessible and interactive way that enables stakehold­ers with various interests to find relevant information at a level appropriate to their needs, no matter where they are in the district heating and cooling journey. It contains technical as well as socio-economical information. The toolbox is exclu­sive for CELSIUS Member Cities and CELSIUS City Supporters. The CEL­SIUS Toolbox is also accumulating information and knowledge from CELSIUS City Supporters, such as other EU projects.
• Webinars for the CELSIUS Members Cities provide knowledge and support to have an impact on planning, development and optimization of district energy sys­tems in Europe. This form of dissemination has proven useful because it al­lows for participation without the restraints of travelling time and cost.

2) CELSIUS takes a holistic perspective taking into account the DHC system as a whole. This means that wherever a CELSIUS Member City is in its development of smart dis­trict energy systems, CELSIUS can give the city support.

• The toolbox is divided into three themes to help guide CELSIUS Member Cities in their development; the themes are Creating the market, Production, and Optimisa­tion.
• The project has partners (experts) from the whole value chain for DHC.
• Parallel to direct support to cities, CELSIUS is lobbying for EU policies to be harmo­nized and supportive to the development of DHC. Any changes in district heat­ing and cooling policies, directives and strategies on an EU level will trickle down to national and regional levels affecting priorities, choices and long-term plan­ning and affect cities in their work to implement smart heating and cooling sys­tems.

3) CELSIUS demonstrators show cases realistic DHC solutions.

• Not only sharing information of what is possible but also showing the demonstra­tor projects, CELSIUS clarifies how systems, planning and collaboration can take form in replicable examples.
• The indicators of the CELSIUS demonstrators – the KPIs – are used to measure per­formance, scientific progress, and used resources. They are useful benchmark­ing tools both for optimising a project and for assuring political acceptance through, for instance, the focus of improvement of the quality of life in the urban areas involved in each project.