Using heat from underground parking lots to warm apartments

EPFL spin-off Enerdrape has developed technology that can recover heat from underground parking lots and use it to warm the apartments above. Its geothermal wall panels are currently undergoing pilot tests at a building in Lausanne's Sébeillon district. Over a third of the energy used in Switzerland each year goes to heating. And nearly 60% of the heating used in Swiss residential buildings originates from fossil fuels - making Switzerland the biggest such consumer in Europe. The good news is that the country's fossil-fuel reliance should decrease in the coming years, thanks to incentives by the federal and cantonal governments, advances in insulation materials and new technology. A growing number of building owners are installing hybrid systems that draw on different types of energy in order to limit the use of fossil fuels - and Enerdrape's technology is for precisely these kinds of systems. Its geothermal wall panels can be installed in underground structures and recover the heat located in the soil.