In a 2012 interview with Climate Control Middle East, Zulfiqar Mooraj, the Managing Director of Samson Controls FZE in the UAE, said that charging people for compensating for lack of full occupancy is a bane of District Cooling. Utility providers, he added, are passing on the results of their decisions to those that have occupied the units in the development served by District Cooling. Shifting his focus to a technical aspect, he said pumps need to pump chilled water to the farthest residential unit but, at the same time, should not flood the nearest unit. The importance of focusing on hydraulic balancing, he said, cannot be over-emphasised, else District Cooling will not be an effective proposition from an energy efficiency point of view.

Five years on, it is disconcerting to note that the discordant voices continue, which means District Cooling as an industry is desperately in need of a massive dose of introspection. Speaking as recently as April 2017, Dominic McPolin, Chief, Central Planning Office, Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs & Urban Planning, Bahrain, reeled off a string of questions, which he said people kept asking him, and which he felt needed a sincere attempt at answering for the wellbeing of District Cooling in the region.

Let’s sample some of them..