Paris – 6^th September, 2022

The Mitigation Enabling Energy Transition in the Mediterranean Region (meetMED), EU funded project, the Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE) in cooperation with the Mediterranean Association of the National Agencies for Energy Management (MEDENER) & Ademe, the French Ecological Transition Agency organized a study tour on District Cooling at Fraîcheur de Paris on September 6^th, 2022 in France.

The study tour was held in the context of meetMED’s Regional Capacity Development Program on District Cooling which aims to promote EE measures in buildings through capacity-building tools adjustment and awareness-raising campaigns based on bankable demonstration projects with significant EE impact and replicability potential.

The main objective of the district cooling tour to the Fraîcheur de Paris plant, attended by 18 participants representing eight countries, was to exchange good practices from the dispatching unit and Canada plants in Paris as one of the giant power stations in Europe.

In the run-up to the tour, a preparatory meeting was preceded on the premises of ADEME that discussed the technicalities of cooling through geothermal technologies in France via the deep geothermal heat pumps and the shallow geothermal energy in addition to the individual and collective market in France—moreover, showcasing the acceleration of the ecological transition with ADEME through highlighting the SDGs’ linkage with the district cooling and focusing more on the regulatory framework in France, the national strategies, and the local scale mechanism.

During the tour, participants recognized the district cooling system of Paris developed by Fraîcheur de Paris that feeds the cooling needs of hotels, department stores, offices, and museums in the capital through 10 production sites and four storage sites and supplies nearly 400 GWh/year of cooling to more than 730 buildings.