The heat being wasted across Europe could cover 100% of our buildings' needs. District heating and cooling networks can utilise excess heat available from various sources, including excess heat from urban facilities ( data centres, sewage collectors, cooling systems of tertiary buildings, underground stations). However, due to some regulatory challenges, lack of large-scale replicable demonstrators and appropriate financial support schemes this opportunity is wasted.

There is a lot of work to be done at European level and beyond to integrate this readily available energy efficiency solution and reduce our heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Therefore, the ReUseHeat H2020 project is organising a policy workshop in order to have an open and interactive debate on how to make waste heat recovery investments happen.