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Subway Station Heat to Warm Paris Apartment Building

by Amar Toor on September 14, 2010 at 08:45 AM

paris metro
They may be mild by Bostonian or New Yorker standards, but Parisian winters can still get pretty frigid. Residents at one old building near the Centre Pompidou, however, might have an easier time staying warm next winter, thanks to an environmentally friendly renovation that takes full advantage of one of the city's most elusive natural resources: humanity.

Located at the edge of the Marais district, the apartment building is slated to undergo a renovation that would allow all of its apartments to be heated by the energy generated from passengers and trains passing through a nearby metro station. Officials at Paris Habitat, the housing company that owns the building, are hoping to channel this warmth into the building through a system of heat exchangers and pipes that could reduce carbon emissions by up to a third of the current output.

Unfortunately for everyone else in Paris, however, it may be impossible to replicate the project in other, less fortuitously-located apartments. "Luckily, the building is connected to the metro through a staircase," Paris Habitat's Francois Wachnick tells Reuters. "We were lucky to find a passageway that allows us to collect the heat directly from the metro, without having to pay to build one, otherwise it would have been impossible." It's also worth noting that the new system will only complement (not replace) the district-wide energy infrastructure currently in place, meaning that residents won't have to worry about an all-too inevitable transit strike standing between them and a warm night.

Tags: carbon, carbon emissions, CarbonEmissions, Energy, france, french, geothermal, geothermal power, GeothermalEnergy, GeothermalPower, heat, heating, metro, paris, subway, subways, top, transit, winter

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