Cofely to extend district heating in Leicester
Cofely has signed a 25-year contract with Leicester City Council to link and extend four existing district-heating schemes in the city. The work will be delivered through a new subsidiary company, Leicester District Energy Company, with a £14 million investment by Cofely and additional funding from the Community Energy Saving Programme.
These low-carbon schemes are due to go live during 2010. They will serve 3000 dwellings and 15 civic buildings through 7 km of insulated pipework. When all of the first phases have been delivered, the scheme will use a combination of over 5 MW of gas-fired CHP and biomass boilers to achieve CO2 emissions of 12 000 t a year.
A second phase will extend the scheme to include HMP Leicester and the University of Leicester.
Dr Emma Fieldhouse, environmental manager at the University of Leicester, says, ‘Incorporating CHP into the university’s operations will help us achieve at least a 10% reduction in our carbon footprint, taking us closer to our own strategic carbon-emissions reduction of 60% by 2020.’
Simon Woodward, chief executive of Cofely District Energy, commented: ‘We’re delighted to have this opportunity to build on the impressive sustainability initiatives already implemented by LCC. In linking the four existing district heating schemes we will be able maximise the efficiency of the CHP and biomass plant to achieve even greater carbon savings. The development of a large-scale district-energy scheme in Leicester has been a long-term vision of the city council and its partners. I am therefore delighted that the spirit of long-term partnership embraced by our proposals, coupled with our innovative integrated delivery solution, has been selected by the council.’
