Biomass heat is common in large-scale, industrial boilers and can also be used in district heating applications. Biomass feedstocks such as woody biomass, crop residues, pellets, and solid organic wastes are often used in combination with conventional fuels in district heating systems. Large-scale boilers are able to burn a larger variety of fuels, including wood […]

Bioenergy heating and cooling technologies convert the stored solar energy in biomass into usable forms. Feedstocks can originate as agricul­tural products (e. g., energy crops), forest products (e. g., wood residues), waste (e. g., animal waste or municipal solid waste), or industrial byprod­ucts (e. g., lignin-containing sulfite lyes in alkaline-spent liquor from pulp and paper […]

Direct-use geothermal technologies are mature and can provide space heat­ing for buildings, including via district heating systems, but can also provide heat for industrial processes, for example, agricultural products and mineral drying. Direct-use geothermal can also supply CHP plants with both elec­tricity and heat. Iceland, for example, as of 2010 had a total of 580 […]

The most common application of solar thermal heat is in the form of low – temperature (up to 80°C) collectors that provide heat to residential or com­mercial buildings. Flat plate collectors are most widely used at the residential level, providing space or hot water heating. Small solar-thermal based cool­ing systems (from 100 down to 4.5 […]

In solar heating systems, collectors transform solar irradiance into heat and use a carrier fluid (e. g., water or air) to transfer the heat either to point of use or to a storage unit. There are a number of different technologies, both active (e. g., flat plate collectors and evacuated tube collectors) and passive (e. […]

Renewable energy sources used for heating and cooling include solar radiation, geothermal energy, and biomass (in solid, liquid, or gas­eous forms and derived from a variety of feedstocks). These technolo­gies can be implemented in large-scale, centralized applications such as district heating systems or combined heat and power (CHP) plants, as well as small-scale, decentralized applications […]

‘ Geothermal energy is generally defined as heat stored within the earth. This heat originates from the earth’s molten interior and from the decay of radioactive materials. Down to the depths accessible by drilling with modern technology, the average geothermal gradient is about 2.5-3.0 °C/100 m. Geothermal energy can be used for electricity generation or […]

Ocean waves are caused by winds as they blow across the surface of the sea. The energy that waves contain can be harnessed and used to produce electricity. Due to the direction of the prevailing winds and the size of the Atlantic Ocean, the UK and northwestern Europe have one of the largest wave energy […]