District Energy’s Moment: What IDEA2026 Made Clear About the Clean Energy Transition

The energy transition has a thermal problem and grids are being asked to electrify.

District energy thermal networks are the piece that fits this puzzle, and this June in Ottawa, more than 800 professionals gathered at the International District Energy Association’s (IDEA’s) 117th Annual Conference and Trade Show to work out how to close that gap.

For me (attending my first IDEA event!), I left feeling energized and excited about the future of the industry. Meeting many folks I’d spoken with daily over email for the first time in person only solidified their passion for advancing the field. It was exciting to watch longtime attendees reconnect, people who were once strangers and are now close friends and mentors after years of attending IDEA’s annual conferences. After attending the event myself, it is clear why this community keeps coming back.

The proof point the sector has been building toward

It was a busy week in Ottawa. Even before the main conference stage opened, we celebrated the ribbon-cutting of the Energy Services Acquisition Program’s (ESAP) Cliff Energy Centre. This new district energy system will provide heating and cooling to federal and non-federal buildings across Ottawa and Gatineau. The Cliff Energy Centre will reduce emissions, improve reliability, and support long-term cost effectiveness, but what many people will remember most is that this system doesn’t look like an energy plant at all. It’s built beautifully into the side of the cliff, with architecture and landscaping designed to double as public park.

What makes ESAP significant beyond its scale is what it demonstrates about integrated energy planning. The system was built to evolve and was designed to add renewable sources, integrate thermal storage, and absorb future electrification without stranding the infrastructure investment. IDEA Board Chair (2025-2026) David Woodson framed it perfectly:

“What Ottawa has built is a working model for what every major city in the world should be pursuing.”

Key takeaways from this year’s plenary sessions

Talk around “sustainability” was hot and while that era isn’t ending, we learned that it’s finally getting a business model. The brightest leaders across district energy took the stage at IDEA2026 to make that case. Panelists from Equans, Enwave, Creative Energy, Cordia Energy, Vicinity Energy, CenTrio, and Corix shared that district energy’s value proposition is strong, but it only lands when the pitch matches the buyer. Today, building owners don’t want to manage heat pump plants. They want to run hospitals, offices, and residential towers. Their pitch that works leads with energy cost certainty, decarbonization compliance, and capital relief. The clean infrastructure story follows from there.

The electricity grid is also under pressure that poles and wires alone cannot solve. Leaders at the international level projected $120 billion in grid investment needed to meet 2050 electricity demand, with some areas potentially tripling grid infrastructure. District energy thermal networks are a peak demand management tool, a transmission deferral mechanism, and a grid resilience asset. They’re largely absent from the integrated resource planning processes where those decisions get made.

Both attendees and panelists were drawn to learning more about the Denmark model, which was discussed in depth by Lars Gullev of Gullev DH Advisory. In Denmark, they are leaning on sector coupling when the regulatory structure supports it. District heating companies are running large-scale heat pumps and electric boilers, buying electricity during low or negative price hours, and selling grid flexibility services back to the system. Some are even producing heat at a net cost below zero. The secret is integrated planning and attractive business cases.

While district energy has sometimes fallen through the cracks, the industry is committed to fixing that. Voices from the UAE, Ireland, UNIDO, and the IEA converged on a theme the sector has been pushing for years: policymakers don’t connect the dots between water, energy, carbon, and community resilience. Panelists from Dubai and Dublin described the same pressures as peak electric demand spiking in ways grids weren’t designed to absorb, policy frameworks that haven’t kept pace, and waste heat recovery, thermal energy storage, and deep water cooling sitting underutilized as the gap widens.

Everyone’s mission is just getting started.

The communications challenge is as real as the technical one

IDEA Board Member Frank Cuomo of Con Edison said: “As engineers, we are not the best communicators. We need to make it as simple as possible. We need to have a good storyline.” The stakes of getting that right are higher than they’ve ever been.

The sector is also making its case simultaneously to utility regulators, municipal planners, real estate developers, and building owners. These are individual audiences that each require a different type of communication to reach the same end goal. For example, why grid resilience is important for the utility; GHG compliance for the government; capital efficiency for the developer; and energy cost certainty for the owner.

That’s why it was also remarkable to see representatives from 19 countries sign a Memorandum of Understanding committing to district energy as core clean infrastructure.

The organizations that will win the conversations ahead aren’t necessarily running the most sophisticated thermal networks. They’re the ones translating technical value into language that moves decisions. And at Greenough, we’re excited to be at the forefront of these conversations with IDEA and its long-standing members.