Pipe dream Heat network expands across the city

MORE than half the people of Bristol will either live, work or study in a place kept warm by the Swedish nation - whose company has announced huge plans to expand the city's District Heat Network in the next 25 years.

- Tristan CORK

Inside Vattenfall's Castle Park site

That's the vision of Vattenfall, a firm 100 per cent owned by the Swedish state, which is one of the partners in the Bristol City Leap project aiming to reduce the carbon footprint of the city. Vattenfall has now revealed a new plan to expand the District Heat Network, a system that is currently already in operation in the city centre, Redcliffe, Temple Meads and Bedminster.

The expanding District Heat Network has now reached the milestone of supplying the equivalent of 11,500 homes in Bristol that are either connected or signed up to connect, and Vattenfall has told the Post that construction will begin on an extension of the heat network further into the city centre and out into the east of the city.

Currently, the centre of the heat network is next to Castle Park, where the latent heat in the water of the Floating Harbour is extracted and multiplied to provide heating and hot water to buildings on either side of the harbour around Old Market, Temple Meads and Redcliffe.