How waste heat from Hamburg’s copper smelter is warming the city but not the planet

euronews (in English)

How waste heat from Hamburg’s copper smelter is warming the city but not the planet  Hamburg, in northern Germany, is home to a one-of-a-kind district heating system. The hot water that supplies it is largely obtained from waste heat from the city’s copper smelter, meaning no CO2 is released.  In partnership with the European Commission  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/07/21/how-waste-heat-from-hamburgs-copper-smelter-is-warming-the-city-but-not-the-planet  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

Transcript

00:00Hamburg in northern Germany is home to an innovative district heating system.

00:06The hot water that supplies it is largely obtained from waste heat without releasing CO2.

00:13This project here is still unique because we use waste heat from a source

00:19where never, at no time, fossil fuels has been involved.

00:24The HafenCity District, once a port area of the city, is now a major urban redevelopment project.

00:34Since 2018, all buildings in HafenCity East have been connected to a district heating system

00:40powered by waste thermal energy.

00:45Just a few kilometres away from HafenCity, more than 400,000 tonnes of pure copper

00:51are produced every year at the Aorubis smelter.

00:56The copper concentrates you get from the mining, you have a lot of sulphur inside

01:01and this sulphur reacts with oxygen and this is an exothermal reaction producing heat actually.

01:07So totally CO2 free, no gas burned, it's just there.

01:11Right now we can collect it and we can heat up water with that.

01:16A 3.7 kilometre long pipeline network brings the water to the city.

01:23But first it passes through a key element of the project,

01:26the supplier EnerCity Contracting's energy station.

01:30Here the water is pumped and stored to balance fluctuations in heat supply and demand.

01:36If no heat is available from our partner, we have a backup system here which can provide the heat for our customers

01:46on the basis of a boiler which can use natural gas.

01:52EnerCity Contracting invested 8 million Euro in the energy station of which 2.9 million Euro were co-financed by European Cohesion Policy.

02:01The total project budget to deliver the heat to HafenCity East was over 40 million Euro.

02:09Next to the energy station, this first aid kit factory uses the district heating to warm its 12,000 square metre facility.

02:19According to the managing director, replacing its two oil boilers was a good idea.

02:24This was a large step for us to make the connection of the low carbon heating of EnerCity Contracting.

02:33We could reduce our CO2 printing of 170 tons per year.

02:39It provides heat to up to 28,000 households in several districts across Hamburg.

02:46And it saves up to 120,000 tons of CO2 per year.

02:53And it saves the heat up to 48,000 gallons per year.

02:59So that does not have the highest part for any reduction in the energy station.

03:01And it was actually a very small tool that we had in the mix of Enhanced we use from�� healthcare.

03:05And it saves of 4.0 gallons per year.

03:10And it gives you a total amount of energy of your Tuấn to Archer and theono in the energy statin.

03:14And it saves these hours of the amount of energy to lift the ground up through a air.

03:17And it's a great effort to reduce the need for the heat of the day.

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