Towards the next generation of urban heating systems? Governing multi-infrastructural solutions in Amsterdam

Abstract

Pressurised by commitments to climate targets and the volatility of fossil fuel prices, cities need to decarbonise their heating systems. However, promoting new ways of generating, recovering, storing and distributing heat from unconventional sources is a complex urban governance task that overarches several infrastructure domains. This article explores the governance challenges of transitioning urban heating towards increasingly hybrid systems built on other infrastructure domains and in which networks at different temperatures and scales are combined with off-grid solutions. Building on critiques of techno-solutionism and its promise of seamless fixes for sustainability issues, we focus on the governance frameworks designed to support technological solutions. We argue that urban governance innovations such as the devolution of key responsibilities, multi-infrastructure coordination or urban experimentation follow similar logics of solutionist thinking that underestimate their socioeconomic, political and spatial dimensions. Empirically, we investigate Amsterdam’s transition towards a new generation of heating infrastructures based on nexuses with urban data, electricity, water, wastewater and waste infrastructures. These purported multi-infrastructural solutions have been promoted through collaborative planning efforts, local heat visions and experiments. However, we expose key limitations of current urban governance approaches: these partially overlook conflicts of interest, local resistance and the ambivalent spatial and socioeconomic impacts of heating transitions. Equally problematic are the weak European and national regulation and limited institutionalisation of district heating, with local stakeholders relying primarily on experimentation and voluntary collaboration.