A sour energy cocktail, new DHC Academy courses and a cooling project with Engineers Europe

There is a clear risk Heat will be the big topic in Europe also in the coming winter. The Continent’s storage tanks are just above 60% full, a historical low for this time of year. (The UK storage capacity is limited to 4-6 days of consumption). Fresh tension between the US and Iran has cut the chances of more tankers sailing anytime soon. Europe is likely to enter the winter with its gas storage tanks no more than 75% full, compared with a five-year average of 90%. “Europe is approaching energy crisis territory”, as one analyst phrased it. The volatile geopolitical situation makes it difficult to predict prices. The European benchmark price today (Sept 2nd) is €74/MWh. Some energy experts warn that the price of gas could hit €100 in the coming months, well above the pre-war average of €32.

Energy security is another risk factor. The EU is importing 90% of it’s gas consumption. Norway provides a third, the remainder is from outside of the continent. Russia still represents 15% of the imports.

All in all, we are facing a very sour energy cocktail:

• stocks well below targets
• prices 2-3 times higher than pre-war levels pushing up inflation and budget deficits
• limited margins – cost-of-living is already a big challenge for many households
• a very risky geo-political situation causing concerns for disruption of supplies

I could go on but will not. Bottom line is that countries across Europe will have to double down on efforts to improve building efficiency and replace gas with heat pumps and heat networks connected to a broad variety of more economically and ecologically sustainable sources if heat. To do so there is an urgent need to scale up delivery capacity of new installations in our sector. Standardisation, collaboration, and replication of best practice are critical components to enable this, areas which we try to facilitate in Heatnet Global. Another key priority is to without delay attract and train 10s of thousands of young talents to our industry. This is why the DHC Academy, co-funded by the EU and led by Euroheat & Power is such a timely initiative. It is rapidly becoming a hub for collaboration and coordination of training activities in the sector. Training courses are now being initiated and scaled up (examples further down in this mail) and the coalition of partners to this training alliance is expanding rapidly.

We have a series of courses in pipeline for the coming months. Examples on courses are:

• Decarbonising Heat – Introductory course
• Digital Transformation for DHC
• Building Efficiency
• Recovering Industrial Waste Heat
• Sustainable Cooling
• More to come…

Heatnet has been invited by Engineers Europe (EE) to lead a project focusing on “Sustainable Cooling of Buildings” (EE is the Brussel based umbrella organisation of national engineering associations in Europe – www.engineerseurope.com). The initiative involves industry actors from across Europe. We are currently in the process of specifying scope, milestones, and deliverables. More info to follow.

On Sept 17th we will launch a Micro Credentials course on Decarbonising Heating. The course will consist of 10 online modules and an in-person session in Hamilton on Nov 26. The ongoing expansion of HCE’s heat network in Hamilton and related investments will be used as a reference case in the training sessions. Similar introductory courses will be organised within the frame of DHC Academy targeting the European market.

We will be back shortly with further news addressing various topics, e.g.:

• UK – trends in the market
• Up-date on Industrial Waste Heat projects in India
• Report from the upcoming OECD led Global Forum on the Environment and Climate Change in Paris on September 16–17, 2026
• Up-date from DHC Academy