María Eguaras PHOTO: loaned

María Eguaras, a doctoral student at School of Architecture of the University of Navarra, is spending two months at the Högskolan i Halmstad University in Sweden. Specifically, she is doing research on district heating issues with Professor Sven Werner, one of Europe's leading experts in this field topic, in order to promote this technology in Spain.

As he explains, district heating systems are mainly based on the employment of five strategic resources as fuel: waste heat from thermal power plants (cogeneration), heat obtained from waste incineration, waste heat from industrial processes, geothermal heat sources and renewable fuels such as wood or straw.

"These technologies are the main method of providing heating and hot water in countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Poland. Many people think that these countries are leaders in this field because of their cold climate, but that is not entirely true, as they are also pioneers in cooling. For example, Stockholm has one of the largest district cooling systems in the world, which serves to provide air conditioning to major office buildings and shopping centers in the city center, "says the doctoral student.

Heating in winter and cooling in summer
In this sense, María Eguaras stresses that the application of this technology "is of great interest in Navarra and the rest of Spain, both to provide heating in winter and cooling in summer".

The stay is part of the thesis of the Navarre architect: "My main goal is to finish it and apply what I have learned to the university teaching . I also want to encourage urban planning projects to take into account this system subject , since district heating is one of the most important installations in the urban environment, as shown by numerous examples built all over the world".