ABSTRACT
Cities are the workfloor of operational planning in many respects, such as transportation, environmental quality management, physical planning, energy provision, social planning and so forth. Decentralized policy initiatives at city level–which cover at the same time a considerable share of the population of a nation–may increase planning efficiency. Urban energy–environmental planning may be a good case in this context. District heating refers to any energy system where heat resulting from another source (such as electricity generation and combustion of fossil fuels) is distributed to the domestic sector for heating purposes. The idea of combined heat and power (CHP) is relatively simple. The heat waste in thermal power stations is very high (generally about 60 per cent). According to Verbruggen and Buyse cogeneration is a good case of economies of scale where the costs of generating outputs–electricity and heat–in a combined way is lower than the costs of generating outputs separately.
