- Crete hosted European partners working on ways to reuse wasted heat and reduce energy costs.
- The DISCO project (Promotion of district heating and cooling solutions for the efficient utilization of waste heat) brings together partners from ten European countries through Interreg Europe.
- Arkalohori is already developing a local district-heating system using biomass.
- The first phase is expected to provide heating for at least 70 households and the municipal swimming pool.
The Region of Crete hosted a meeting of DISCO partners in Heraklion, bringing together representatives from Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia and Serbia, along with representatives from the Technical University of Crete.
The project operates through Interreg Europe, supporting public authorities in exchanging expertise, identifying good practices and improving energy policies.
The discussions focused on something that sounds simple but is considerably more complicated in practice: how public authorities, businesses and citizens can work together to develop district heating and cooling systems, what gets in the way of those projects, and what policies might help remove those obstacles.
Crete’s Own Example Is in Arkalohori
On the second day, the visiting partners toured the biomass facility that will supply a district-heating network in part of Arkalohori.
The wider project was then presented at the Minoa Pediada Town Hall by Aristotelis Tsekouras, mechanical engineer and Director of Project Development of the Community.
The system is being developed through Crete Valley and is initially expected to provide heating to at least 70 households, as well as the municipal swimming pool.
Biomass, Local Resources, and the Circular Economy
The Arkalohori project is a local example of how energy production, community needs and environmental policy can be connected.
The idea is to use local biomass rather than relying entirely on conventional fossil-fuel-based heating. This creates another connection that is particularly relevant to Crete: the relationship between local resources and the circular economy.
Instead of treating energy and waste as completely separate problems, the approach asks whether resources that would otherwise be discarded or underused can become part of a local energy system.
What Crete Can Learn from Northern Europe
DISCO brings together experience from countries where district heating and cooling systems are already much more established, particularly in northern Europe.
For Crete, that knowledge can feed into regional energy planning and help identify approaches that might work under local conditions.
The point is not necessarily to copy what Sweden or Denmark is doing and simply drop it onto an island in the Mediterranean.
Crete has a different climate, different buildings, different energy demands and different available resources.
The useful part is learning what works elsewhere, and then figuring out what makes sense here.
From Wasted Heat to Useful Infrastructure
Maria Apostolaki, coordinator of the project and Head of the Mitigation and Energy Efficiency Department of the Region of Crete’s Directorate for Climate Change, welcomed the participating partners.
The meeting concentrated on identifying barriers to district heating and cooling projects and developing policy proposals that could help overcome them.
These systems require considerably more than pipes and a heat source: they need planning, investment, cooperation between institutions, technical expertise and, ultimately, people willing to connect to them.
The DISCO project is therefore looking not only at technology but at the policy and cooperation needed to make the technology work.
A Small Project with a Bigger Lesson
Regional Councillor for European and International Relations Giorgos Alexakis described European projects as an opportunity to improve regional policies in Crete.
He also highlighted the value of seeing district-heating and district-cooling applications from northern Europe and learning how wasted heat can be incorporated into regional energy planning.
For Crete, the Arkalohori project provides a particularly tangible example.
The cooperation between the Region of Crete, the Municipality of Minoa Pediada, and Minoa Energy Community shows how a local energy project can bring together different levels of public administration and community participation.
