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Currently heating and cooling in buildings is responsible for over 30% of the primary energy consumption in the United Kingdom with a similar amount in China. We analyze heat pumps and district thermal energy network for efficient buildings. Their advantages are examined (i.e., flexibility in choosing heat sources, reduction of fuel consumption and increased environmental quality, enhanced community energy management, reduced costs for end users) together with their drawbacks, when they are intended as means for efficient building heating and cooling.

A literature review observed a range of operating conditions and challenges associated with the efficient operation of district heating and cooling networks, comparing primarily the UK’s and China’s experiences, but also acknowledging the areas of expertise of European, the United States, and Japan. It was noted that the efficiency of cooling networks is still in its infancy but heating networks could benefit from lower distribution temperatures to reduce thermal losses. Such temperatures are suitable for space heating methods provided by, for example, underfloor heating, enhanced area hydronic radiators, or fan-assisted hydronic radiators. However, to use existing higher temperature hydronic radiator systems (typically at a temperatures of >70°C) a modified heat pump was proposed, tested, and evaluated in an administrative building. The results appears to be very successful.

District heating is a proven energy-efficient mechanism for delivering space heating. They can also be adaptable for space cooling applications with either parallel heating and cooling circuits or in regions of well-defined seasons, on flow and return circuit with a defined change-over period from heating to cooling. Renewable energy sources can provide either heating or cooling through, for example, biomass boilers, photovoltaics, solar thermal, etc. However, for lower loss district heating systems, lower distribution temperatures are required. Advanced heat pumps can efficiently bridge the gap between lower temperature distribution systems and buildings with higher temperature hydronic heating systems

This chapter presents a case for district heating (and cooling). It demonstrates the benefits of reduced temperatures in district heating networks to reduce losses but also illustrates the need for temperature upgrading where building heating systems require higher temperatures. Thus, a novel heat pump was developed and successfully tested.

The authors provide new quantitative evidence of the relationship between technologies and organizational design in the context of complex one-off products. The systems that produce complex, one-off products in mature, fragmented industries such as construction lack many of the typical organizational features that researchers have deemed critical to product development success (e.g., team familiarity, frequent communication, and strong leadership). In contrast, the complexity of these products requires a diverse knowledge base that is rarely found within a single firm. The one-off nature of construction’s products further requires improvization and development by a distributed network of highly specialized teams. And because the product is complex, significant innovations in the end product require systemic shifts in the product architecture. Riitta Katila, Raymond E. Levitt and Dana Sheffer use an original, hand-collected dataset of the design and construction of 112 energy-efficient “green” buildings in the United States, combined with in-depth fieldwork, to study these questions. A key conclusion is that the mature US construction industry, with its particularly fragmented supply chain, is not well suited to implementing “systemic innovations” that require coordination across trades or stages of the project. However, project integration across specialists with the highest levels of interdependence (i.e., craft, contract integration) mitigates the knowledge and coordination problems. There are implications for research on how technology shapes organizations (and particularly how organizations shape technology), and on the supply chain configuration strategies of firms in the construction industry as well as building owners who are seeking to build the best buildings possible within their budgets.