District Cooling in Thane: Accelerating to Investments

District Energy in Cities Initiative hosted a series of workshops and meetings with a diverse group of stakeholders in Thane. These included real estate developers, government officials, local building owners and technical experts, and were open to the public.

Ben Hickman, our on-the-ground project coordinator, presented the completed district cooling pre-feasibility studies for Hiranandani Estate and the Viviana Mall area, to accelerate the projects to investment and commence activities on the 20-year District Cooling Plan for Thane.

Towards these objectives, Ben met with Thane Municipal Corporation’s to receive their final feedback on the pre-feasibility study results and recommendations. This helps the Initiative to ensure it has a full picture of the local district energy landscape from local experts.

Consultations with TMC and national implementation partner EESL on project selection and to define a procurement plan to take the projects from studies to investment are part of the Initaitive's strategy to connect projects to investment at the early stages to open the market for district energy.

We make sure that we include local stakeholders at every stage of project development. Meetings with local building owners and developers on the studies’ technical results helped to answer any remaining technical questions and maintain interest in their connection to district cooling.

Part of the effort to keep local stakeholders engaged includes establishing a "District Energy Cell" in each of the cities where we work. The launch a District Cooling Cell in partnership with TMC with EESL was successful and assists local stakeholders and provides training on stakeholder coordination throughout project activites.

Thane's Cell is unique as they are responsible for project activities in one of the Initiaitve's pilot cities and our activities go much deeper including receiving additional support through private sector investment, a pre-feasibility study, city-wide energy mapping and planning support, and an international call for tender. Kick-off activities for development of a city-wide ‘Deep Assessment’ for district cooling and the 20-year District Cooling Plan for Thane were held to coordinate amongst national and local policy.