With more district cooling projects in the pipeline to meet the growing demands of new development plans in Qatar, the country’s district cooling market is worth around $2.2bn, said a statement issued by Qatar Project Management (QPM) company yesterday.
QPM, which chaired the recently concluded 7th Annual District Cooling Summit in Doha, citing Kahramaa data, said that industry’s cooling capacity (measured in tonnes of refrigeration, TR) has expanded significantly in recent years, rising from 25,700 TR in 2007 to around 485,000 TR in 2014, which is expected to rise to 2.4 million TR by 2022.
Salah Nezar, the company’s corporate sustainability director said that this was an indication of Qatar’s prominence in driving innovation in the district cooling sector.
Nezar recognised the significant impetus placed on sustainability in district cooling by Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) and the authority’s leading role in driving positive change in the sector.
He stressed that district cooling is an important technology which is seeing significant evolutions in recent years to deliver greater energy efficiency and reduce the impact on the environment. District cooling is essential to increasing energy efficiency, human well-being and reducing the carbon footprint of our campuses, hospitals, districts, cities and overall countries.
Without district cooling, at least 40% of the energy used in cooling through conventional methods is wasted. Trigeneration (combined cooling, heat and power) and renewables including solar energy and bio fuels could further reduce 75% primary energy compared to electric district cooling.
District cooling offers its users many advantages including the use of less energy to power a cooling plant than a collective set of standalone air conditioning units in a community or district, all running simultaneously.
The energy savings can be tremendous when district cooling is implemented properly. At 1 TR hour, district cooling consumes around 0.9 kilowatt-hour (KWh), significantly less than the 1.7 KWh used by air-cooled chillers and the 2 KWh needed for window units.
