Heated sidewalks?

[Davidbourque]

Fait pas mal plus chaud à Paris qu'ici effectivement.

[OursNoir]

Les résidences de l'ÉTS (phase 3) utilisent ce procédé pour chauffer les aires communes.

[yarabundi]

Il y a des trottoirs chauffants en face l'entrée du siège social de Canada Steamship Line au square Victoria.

[acpnc]

Peut-être qu'on pourrait justement profiter de l'énergie solaire, grâce à des panneaux installés sur les toits des immeubles, pour chauffer les trottoirs environnants? Même l'hiver les panneaux solaires peuvent être efficaces. L'idée serait d'économiser au maximum le coût de la ressource tout en diminuant considérablement la nécessité du déneigement et du déglaçage. D'où des économies de carburant et aussi de main-d'oeuvre.

 

On pourrait même donner des incitatifs fiscaux aux entreprises qui contribuent à l'expérience, en bout de ligne ce serait tout le monde qui en bénéficierait. Et plus ce type d'énergie sera populaire plus les coûts baisseront, on pourrait même développer notre propre filière à l'instar des éoliennes en produisant sur place pour répondre à nos besoins.

 

En bout de ligne on diminuerait notre empreinte écologique, on éliminerait un irritant majeur de l'hiver et on consommerait moins de pétrole, donc moins d'argent qui va à l'étranger.

[jesseps]

I am watching "No Reservations" they did a show in Japan before the tsunami. Sapporo has heated side-walks and they get as much or even more snow than us in winter.

[jesseps]

Looking to wean itself form foreign oil, Vermont's capital and several other cities and towns are considering whether to create a wood-fueled district heating system for city buildings and schools, one into which residents and businesses eventually could hook up.

 

Burlington, Randolph, Middlebury and Brattleboro are examining similar ideas. Interest ranges from what Newport City Manager John Ward called a "very preliminary" review by the planning commission there to a technical feasibility study under way in Burlington to Montpelier's plan, which goes before voters Tuesday.

 

With a population of about 8,000, a wealth of forested hillsides and a chilly climate -- the average daily temperature in January is 16.4 degrees -- Montpelier is seen by many as an ideal candidate for such a system.

 

On Tuesday, residents will vote on a proposed $2.75 million bond issue to develop the system, which would use mainly wood chips.

 

Establishing a district heating system for downtowns that uses wood as the fuel is the norm in parts of Europe. Backers see financial savings, a way to keep their energy spending circulating in the regional economy and a way to reduce carbon emissions. Skeptics see a big up-front expense, though Montpelier is being helped by state and federal grants.

 

Mayor Mary Hooper says the project will pay for itself through savings on heating oil and save the city money overall. When businesses along the routes of the new pipes that will carry hot water through the downtown see that, they'll sign on, too -- though the project's finances don't depend on anyone other than three city buildings and two public schools signing up, Hooper says.

 

Adam Sherman, interim director of the Montpelier-based Biomass Energy Resource Center, and the city's consulting project manager, Harold Garabedian, said there are other benefits as well:

 

-- Cleaner air: With one central, wood-fired heating plant replacing separate chimneys on each of the five public buildings that would be served by the system initially, Montpelier is expected to cut its emissions of acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by up to 11 tons a year.

 

-- Keeping energy money local: Rather than supporting the global oil industry, backers say, the money the city is paying for heating fuel would end up in the hands of loggers and wood chip processors in Vermont, other northeastern states and neighboring Quebec.

 

-- Combatting climate change: Carbon emitted by burning wood is reabsorbed by forests, setting up a recycling system of sorts in which carbon is taken in by trees, low-grade trees are cut and used for fuel (the best ones go for higher-end uses like furniture), carbon is released when the wood chips are burned and reabsorbed by trees. Fossil fuels theoretically are part of a similar cycle, but it takes millions of years.

 

But it's the money that talks loudest.

 

Offering the city's downtown landlords, restaurants and merchants heat that is cheaper and subject to less volatile prices than that made with the area's dominant fuel, oil, "maybe makes them a little more competitive and will help keep some of these businesses viable," Hooper said.

 

Jim Johnston, owner of the Barber and Lanier funeral home on Main Street, does not share the mayor's enthusiasm.

 

"I think it's absolutely ridiculous," Johnston said, adding that he won't hook onto the system even if its piping comes by his business. "I couldn't afford to tool up the building to meet the needs." He said he worries about the city taking on additional debt and about the disruption to downtown businesses during the summer of 2012, when officials expect construction would take place if the bond issue is approved.

 

Common in Europe and already in place in a handful of places around the U.S., district heating systems fueled with wood or other plant matter -- known as biomass -- appear to be gaining interest in Vermont and elsewhere. St. Paul, Minn., has had such a system for years. While cities are planning or building some of the systems, private companies operate others in places including Seattle and Concord, N.H.

 

A hotbed of alternative energy research and activism, Montpelier seems a natural place for Vermont to start.

 

The city hosts the Regulatory Assistance Project, a nonprofit that advises governments around the world on energy conservation policy, the Clean Energy Group, which promotes new approaches to technical innovation in the field and the Biomass Energy Resource Center, which provides guidance to governments and others about developing energy systems fueled by plant matter. Montpelier also has a high concentration of people focused on renewable energy, efficiency and the fight against climate change.

 

"There is quite a bit of intelligence in terms of alternative energy right here in this community," Garabedian said.

 

The state government complex just west of Montpelier's city center already has a wood-chip-fueled boiler system serving the Vermont Statehouse and several adjacent state office buildings.

 

The project under consideration would upgrade the existing boilers with newer, larger and more efficient models and expand the area covered farther west to Montpelier High School and east through the downtown to loop in City Hall, the police and fire stations, continuing farther east to the Union Elementary School.

 

An insulated pipe buried about 3 feet underground would carry hot water to the downtown buildings, which would use heat exchangers to take energy off the system for warming their own spaces.

 

Next in line, if Montpelier approves, might be Burlington, Vermont's largest city.

 

Bruce Seifer, the city's assistant director of economic development, said the city has a wood-burning power plant, the McNeil station, and is looking at using excess heat from the plant in Burlington's Intervale to provide heat to parts of the city.

 

Seifer said none of the technology was new, and that the mystery to him was why Burlington and other cities and towns had not moved previously to develop district heating. "We've got the largest wood stove in Vermont in the Intervale and we're not using the heat."

 

Hooper said Montpelier had not done such a project previously because the combination of federal and state funding that will help cover its nearly $20 million cost was unavailable. It's also a bit of a gamble, she acknowledged, but added that it would be a gamble as well for the city to plan to continue buying 100,000 gallons of heating oil a year.

 

(Courtesy of Businessweek)

 

Not sure how efficient this model would be for heating sidewalks, but it is an interesting idea for heating for Montpelier downtown district though.

[IluvMTL]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/04/out-there-designs-cut-carbon-footprint-heated-sidewalk-cafes/5200/

 

 

Jacqueline Feldman wrote back in February about the showdown over Paris' café terraces, a fierce battle that has pit against each other smokers who would like to stay warm outside (alongside the restauranteurs who want their business) and environmentalists who see heated sidewalks as a giant waste of energy. The tension has been particularly pronounced in Paris, a city famous for its plein-air people-watching. But the trouble is also arising anywhere anti-smoking laws are pushing people out of restaurants and bars and onto the sidewalk.

 

The resulting challenge is an engineering one: By definition, these outdoor terraces must be open-air – otherwise, you couldn't smoke in them. But that design requirement also means that it's nearly impossible to efficiently heat these spaces. (We'll pause here for a moment to also acknowledge that this is very much a first-world design problem.)

 

It's possible, though, that technology could bridge these warring factions in Paris and elsewhere, allowing cities to keep both their smoking havens and their environmental credibility. The city of Paris submitted this problem to the LLGA | Cities Pilot the Future challenge, which for the past four years as been trying to match urban conundrums with innovators all over the world. This year, the challenge corralled calls for solutions from 22 cities to problems ranging from health inequality to traffic congestion. Researchers unearthed a suite of solutions for each one, and the companies and organizations behind them are now vying to implement real-world pilot programs in the host cities. The winners will be announced in San Francisco in May (and we'll plan to look into a few more of these solutions before then).

 

Paris's plea for technological help with its café problem solicited some pretty interesting ideas, from the self-sufficient "Urban Parasols" seen above to photovoltaic devices embedded in "SolarFloors." That second idea comes from a company called OTEM2000, which is envisioning a combination of photovoltaic glass tents and energy-producing "smart floors." Some of their sketches:

 

 

 

The "Urban Parasols" would offer instead a semi-enclosed space for outdoor diners and drinkers (using "thermodynamic solar panels and space blanket insulation"). The same concept could also theoretically enclose bus shelters or other public plazas.

 

 

This more straight-forward idea, from the Danish company Mensa Heating, would turn café tables themselves into heaters, providing infrared under-table heating directly to your extremities for "a more effective method for controlling core body temperature."

 

 

 

One other idea comes from a company called Dext Heat Recovery, which proposes that if restaurants can't efficiently heat their terraces, at least they could offset the waste by capturing more of the excess heat produced in the kitchen. As Dext explains it: "Our heat recovery plate is installed close to the main heat source within the kitchen, either directly behind a chargrill or cooker, or within a canopy. The heat is then absorbed by the plate and transferred into a sealed water circuit, which is circulated through a coil in our buffer cylinder for hot water generation." A little animation of the process:

 

 

Of course, you could also just put on a jacket. But as general appreciators of sidewalks, we can understand why people would want to linger there even in the dead of winter.

 

Keywords: Paris, outdoor terraces, Sidewalks, cafes, energy efficiency, carbon footprint

 

Emily Badger is a staff writer at The Atlantic Cities. Her work has previously appeared in Pacific Standard, GOOD, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area. All posts »

[acpnc]

Des solutions imaginatives mais encore couteuses et qui ne me convainquent qu'à moitié. Je préfère encore la solution simple et sympathique des cafés danois http://www.routard.com/photos/danemark/151717-cafe_a_copenhague_en_mai___partout_en_terrasse_des_couvertures_pour_se_proteger_du_vent_ou_du_froid_.htm

 

On arrête pas le progrès

[L'Autre guide]

Pour ceux qui connaissent les architectes du Quartier international, Daoust-Lestage, demandez-leur si l'expérience de ce quartier a été concluante avec leurs trottoirs chauffants.

 

Car contrairement aux commentaires, sauf celui de Yara, il y a effectivement des trottoirs chauffants à Montréal.

[IluvMTL]

En face de Complexe-Desjardins pour compter un endroit.