Ambitious $240m alliance set to boost local district heating across Europe and Asia.
GIC, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, has invested $240m in Arctic Green Energy to drive up the adoption of zero carbon district heating across Europe and Asia by expanding the use of geothermal energy.
Today, almost half of the global energy consumption is used for heating and cooling in buildings and industry. How cities are heated and cooled is now the primary challenge for successful transition into a clean and carbon neutral world and national and international energy policies and agreements are creating an unprecedented driver towards decarbonisation.
Geothermal energy technology is a renewable, economically competitive and sustainable alternative to the use of fossil fuels for heating and cooling. Arctic Green Energy’s experience in managing, developing, and investing in geothermal and other complementary renewable energy projects is expected to provide a platform for rapidly growing geothermal energy in hard to decarbonise sectors such as buildings.
Ang Eng Seng, GIC’s chief investment officer of infrastructure, said: “We believe the strong public demand to curb climate change will enable this technology to play a meaningful role in decarbonising the heating sector.”
In an increasingly carbon constrained world, geothermal energy has emerged as valuable choice for district heating as it is virtually non-polluting, sustainable and provides baseload energy without intermittency.
Haukur Hardarson, chairman and founder of Arctic Green Energy said, “Taking down chimneys and transforming more cities into healthy living breathing cities is now a real prospect and we look forward to our cooperation with GIC to turn this into a reality.”
