# The Role of Low Temperature Waste Heat Recovery in Achieving 2050 Goals: A Policy Positioning Paper
## 3 Results
### Creating Awareness  
A significant challenge for both industrial and urban waste heat recovery is a low level of awareness of the potential opportunities that it presents, both for owners of waste heat and for those that may wish to exploit it. Well targeted government policy may be able to improve this situation. For historical reasons, the prevalence of district heating varies significantly around Europe and the wider world and this has an important impact on the level of awareness of the opportunities of waste heat recovery.  
It seems likely that the nature of low temperature heat recovery means that businesses are less likely to consider the idea without being prompted. It is perhaps intuitive that high temperature waste heat from, for example, heavy industry may have some value and that there ought to be some way of using it to increase the overall efficiency. The operator of a waste water treatment plant, on the other hand, is unlikely to be intuitively aware that their waste heat is worth anything at all. Increasing awareness for lower temperature heat sources may therefore be a bigger challenge. Despite this, one study on low temperature district heating business model development shows that it is often the owner of the low temperature waste heat that approaches the district heating company asking for their support to make use of the waste heat generated [11]. In conclusion, urban waste heat recovery is seen as a future proof solution and to achieve a greater uptake, awareness of its potential is imperative.  
The UK government has attempted to gauge awareness of waste heat recovery among businesses. A report published in 2016 found that awareness of waste heat recovery in the UK is mixed [34]. Companies whose energy costs were relatively high tended to have significant interest in energy efficiency measures and most had a good awareness of waste heat recovery. Among companies with relatively low energy costs, most of which were smaller, awareness of waste heat recovery tended to be low.  
Sweden has the highest volumes of industrial waste heat recovery in district heating systems in the world, though they are still fairly modest in comparison to available volumes. Among the research community, there is awareness about the available potential whereas awareness among other stakeholder groups is low. During the stakeholder interviews described in Section 2.2, 80% of respondents agreed that there is a legislative gap in promoting the use of urban waste heat. When asked about potential policy to improve this situation, many of the respondents suggested support schemes through, for example, \"raising awareness by marketing actions on a national level\". Others suggested action on a local level, pointing out that this can be done relatively quickly when compared with the EU level.  
During the stakeholder interviews, one French policy maker emphasised the importance of raising awareness of waste heat recovery collectively to promote discussion among citizens. They also emphasised the importance of presenting waste heat recovery solutions in a simple way and to avoid making it a financial issue at an early stage.  
In raising awareness of the benefits of low temperature heat recovery, the presence of existing infrastructure is important. Those countries that have a high level of district heating infrastructure have a much higher level of readiness for exploiting urban heat sources. Such countries are also likely to have a higher existing level of awareness.