• The City of Paris has just renewed its public service concession with Fraîcheur de Paris, a subsidiary of Engie, to operate the capital's cooling network.

  • The latter, which is in fact a set of pipes circulating very cold water, cools 800 buildings including the Louvre and the National Assembly.

  • In the Canada site, located on the right bank, water from the Seine is used to supply cold to the network, thus generating energy savings.

It is less known than its heated cousin.

But the Paris cold network could well become the most popular with global warming and repeated hot spells.

To put it simply, the cooling network is the reverse of the district heating network.

When one is used to heat, the other is used to cool via the circulation of very cold water (at 4°C), like a super collective air conditioner.

And it is Fraîcheur de Paris, an 85% subsidiary of Engie and 15% of the RATP, which operates this 98 km network via a public service concession granted by the Paris City Hall and which was renewed on April 5. for a period of twenty years.

In all, 800 buildings, or 3 million square meters, are connected to this network, largely tertiary players (offices, shopping centers) but also museums such as the Louvre or the National Assembly.

And the City of Paris wants to go further.

"With this new contract, the objective is to triple the size of the network by going from a coverage of 43% of the surface of Paris to all of it", indicates Dan Lert, deputy in charge of the ecological transition.

To, in short, go from number one in Europe to number one in the world.

With the line of sight, the connection of the AP-HP, school groups, nurseries, etc.

Freshness of the Seine

The elected Parisian also recalls that “energy sobriety is at the heart of this new contract”.

Because this collective cooling technique is much less energy intensive than individual air conditioning systems.

To produce this cold, Fraîcheur de Paris has ten sites in the basements of Paris, three of which are located on the banks of the Seine.

One of them, the Canada factory, sinks almost 30 meters underground, just under the Place du Canada, at the end of the Pont des Invalides, on the right bank.

It is reached by a retractable spiral staircase, worthy of the best spy films.

Going down, no Auric Goldfinger, but rather Benoît Reydellet, project director at Fraîcheur de Paris.

"Here we produce a third of the network's cold, either via cooling units or via the free cooling method", he explains.

To sum up, the deep water of the Seine is pumped then brought into contact with the closed network of cooling water.

If the Seine is cool enough, it can cool the network by itself, this is called free cooling.

“In the new contract, we must increase from 2% of total production to 11% in free cooling”, specifies Benoît Reydellet.

Everything is fully automated

And if the Seine is not cold enough, we supplement with conventional cooling by refrigeration units, knowing that “the electricity consumed is 100% renewable, via fields of photovoltaic panels”, specifies the engineer.

Obviously the water from the Seine that is discharged is warmer than that pumped out, but “we never discharge water at more than 31°, promises Benoît Reydellet.

And anyway, this only corresponds to 0.1% of the heat generated by solar radiation on the Parisian portion of the river.

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And all this production of cold takes place under the feet of Parisians in a heap of piping, deafening roar and moist heat.

On the other hand, very few personnel on site, except for maintenance, since everything is automated and the ten sites are managed from a PC located near the Gare de Lyon where two teleoperators are permanently on the alert.

And in the event of a hard blow, an ice water tank (but it is not the only one) is located at the level of the Tour Maubourg to ensure the durability of the cold system.

Finally, if the network is intended to expand, “the connection of housing is not one of the immediate objectives”, indicates Dan Lert who hopes to convince institutional investors thanks to attractive prices.

Or 137 euros per megawatt hour of cold.

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  • Paris

  • Ile-de-France

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  • Global warming

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