Lublin and Sztum are the winners of last year competition for the most innovative project in the field of RES and EE, organized as a part of the umbrella project "Polish-Norwegian cooperation platform for climate and energy conservation".
The objective of the Lublin City project is to improve the energy efficiency of a public building, to optimize the Lublin energy system and to identify cost-effective and harmless to the ozone layer possibilities of using the system heat to cool the offices during the summer.
In the case of Sztum, the main goal of its project is to modernize multi-family buildings using i.e. heat pumps, wind micro power plants with vertical axis of rotation, green roofs, living walls and energy storage. Due to the micro-grants implementation, the two municipalities have established a partnership with the Norwegian municipality of Ullensaker.
During the study visit organized on 3 of March in Ullensaker, the Norwegians presented some very interesting EE and RES solutions to representatives of Lublin and Sztum. One of them is gaining energy for their buildings from many various sources. The best example in this area is the local airport in Ullensaker municipality, which covers heat demand using district heating, heating oil boilers and heat pumps, as well as recovers heat from sewage. In the summer, on the other hand, it uses for cooling energy previously stored in specially adapted warehouses. In the winter time, the snow from the airfield and access roads is gathered in the warehouse. In the summer months, the warehouse is covered with a layer of fresh wood chips, which dry out in the summer and are burned in the local heating plant. This is a very interesting solution that shows how in different weather conditions we can used what nature gives to us.
Another facility visited during the study tour in Norway was sewage treatment plant, where methane is collected. Then it is used as a heat source for subsequent sewage treatment steps. At the end of the treatment process, the sewage sludge is sold to farmers as a high quality fertilizer containing nitrogen and potassium compounds.
