France has suffered during this week a that has left striking images such as that of the Parisians bathing in an area enabled by the city council in the Saint-Martin canalwhich connects the Bassin de la Villette with the Seine River.
Precisely in the French capital there is an infrastructure to combat the heat that replaces the traditional ones and that is not common in Europe. It is a large urban cooling network that is based on taking advantage of the cold water of the Seine River.
The system began to be planned in the 90s and currently has 120 kilometers of underground pipes that supply chilled water to public places such as museums, hospitals, schools and other public buildings. Some examples are the Louvre Museum or the Grand Palace. The water also reaches certain luxury hotels and some office areas.
As explained by the British media , cold water from the Seine river is pumped through a pipewhich runs right next to a second pipe that transports hot water from the city’s buildings. A thin metal wall separates them and a heat exchanger allows the heat from the hot water of the city to pass into the cold water of the Seine without the fluids coming into contact.
Finally, That colder water is circulated through the buildings connected to the cooling system and the water from the Seine is returned to the river slightly warmer than when it entered the pipes.
In this sense, it is worth noting that the monitoring studies carried out indicate that the increase in temperature of the water returning to the Seine River is within environmental limits.
Expansion of the cooling network
Although the initial plan was prepared by a subsidiary of the municipal electricity company, Engie, in 2022 it was the Empresa Fraîcheur de Paris (whose name translates as “the freshness of Paris”) which took over the contract. It has a value of 2,400 million euros, a duration of 20 years and pick up one great expansion of the cooling network.
In concrete terms, Fraîcheur de Paris prevé triple the size of the underground pipe systemexpanding it to all districts and reaching more than 3,000 buildingsincluding essential infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, daycare centers and nursing homes.
In this regard, the portavoz of Fraîcheur de Paris, Tim Guigonstated that “not all buildings in Paris have the same cooling needs, nor are they all suitable for connecting to the grid. The figure of 3,000… reflects a realistic development trajectory. The objective is move from a historic network centered on large tertiary buildings to an infrastructure that encompasses the entire city.
