geothermal cooling and district cooling are increasingly popular methods for homeowners, businesses, and even entire communities to fight rising costs associated with heating and cooling of buildings and now that concepts have spread to the city of stoke-on-trent (u.k.), which has announced plans to start laying pipes and building a geothermal network.

stoke-on-trent is the latest city to initiaite a district cooling system.
(wikimedia commons)

according to a report from thinkgeoenergy.com, the city is expected to start working on the system in the next 11 weeks with more than 700 meters of underground pipes being laid. all told, four kilometers of pipe will be laid around the city’s university quarter and will be completed next year.

“the network will go on to see 18 kilometres of piping laid underground across the city,” the article explained. “the council’s ambitious proposals have already mapped out the geology under the city to look into ways of tapping into naturally forming underground geothermal energy, which would heat the network, helping to power the local economy and provide alternative, sustainable energy for households.”

city officials believe that a district cooling system will cut the municipality’s carbon footprint by 12,500 tons per year. customers should be able to connect to the system as early as the fall of 2018.

district cooling systems have been used in numerous locations, including in stadiums being built for the qatar world cup in 2022.

geothermal cooling uses heat from the earth’s core to reduce the cost of heating or cooling buildings and it was recently popularized by dandelion, the latest spin-off from alphabet, which will be installing geothermal systems for residential homes in 2018.