| By Miquéla V Thornton The heat held in New York's underground labyrinth of infrastructure, from hundreds of miles of subway tunnels to parking garages and malls, is a clean energy gold mine. Now, a Swiss startup wants to tap it to heat and cool buildings, all without drilling a single borehole. Globally, heating accounts for nearly half of all energy consumption. That makes it a big business, with the potential to become a half-trillion-dollar market, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. Using the Earth's heat offers one route to cut emissions, but traditional geothermal projects can be costly and require space to operate drilling equipment, making it a poor fit for cities. Startup Enerdrape's system uses energy-harvesting panels in manmade underground spaces, though, which could allow it to gain a toehold in cities. The Swiss company focuses on older multifamily buildings, which are harder to decarbonize than newer builds. In New York, residential structures built before 1960 make up over 64% of the housing stock, though not all of it is well-suited for the panels.  Enerdrape's panels in an underground parking garage. Photo courtesy of Enerdrape "There really aren't many companies doing this," said BNEF analyst Stephanie Diaz. "They are truly a novel approach in how to decarbonize buildings," though the company will have to figure out how to scale its technology to work with a wide variety of buildings. Enerdrape's technology is the product of decades of research spearheaded by Lyesse Laloui, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne. A five-time startup founder, he's spent the last 15 years tackling the question of how to turn underground structures into energy sources. Initially, he created a solution for new construction, but realized that was a small part of the decarbonization puzzle compared to existing buildings. He and his team developed a prototype heat-exchanging panel in 2015. The startup's panels affix to concrete infrastructure, which can hold large stores of heat. (Think of how hot a subway station gets in the summer, for example.) Enerdrape taps that heat using a system of prefabricated panels that absorb geothermal energy from the ground or the air. Even when the subway and other underground spaces aren't sweltering, the ground temperature, at several feet of depth, stays relatively constant throughout the year. During the summer, Enerdrape's system uses the underground as a heat sink to absorb a building's heat and cool it. In the winter, it does the opposite, using the ground like a battery to warm things up. The system requires installing one panel for roughly every 110 square feet (10 square meters) of a building's floor area. The panels are connected to heat-transferring fluid, working in tandem with one or more heat pumps. "Enerdrape moves heat from where it's not needed to where it is," co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Alessandro Rotta Loria said. The company, which launched in 2019, has projects across Europe, including with Switzerland's largest retailer, Coop Immobilier, small businesses like a dental office in Spain, utilities and multiple Swiss cities. It also teamed up with Engie, one of Europe's largest gas and renewable energy suppliers, to provide energy to 72 homes with Paris Habitat, France's largest affordable housing provider. Enerdrape said its 145 panels provide 70 megawatt-hours of heat per year and cover 25% of homes' domestic hot water needs while avoiding 15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. However, the startup faces some challenges. Heat pump adoption is higher in parts of Europe, and Enerdrape will have to contend with slower adoption in the US due to cost. Upfront cost, which includes panel installation and heat pump connection, is typically between $100,000 and $500,000, depending on a building's available surface area that can be activated as a heat source. Political headwinds in the US are another issue, with President Donald Trump curtailing federal support for heat pumps. The system can cut electricity costs, though. According to the company, it can deliver energy at 3 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to the average US gas price of 17 cents per kWh. Enerdrape says its solution is cheaper in Europe, where fuel costs are 3 to 5 times higher than in the US. The system also won't help with larger buildings, which are some of New York's biggest energy users. "We're not going to be able to do much" with a 60-floor high-rise, Rotta Loria said. The majority of New York City residential buildings covered by the law are pre-war construction of six stories or less, according to the Urban Green Council. That provides plenty of opportunities for technology like Enerdrape's. Read the full story. Subscribe for more news on greener living. | 
Mashadipati Location Hotel Clove is located in the heart of Bandung, in a ...
No comments