The Regional Round Table at Zealand was held physically and concerned thermonet (5GDHC) and the potential and barriers of making it a new business area for compagnies. The barriers discussed concerned:

• Financing and especially the possibility of that thermonet is defined in the law as district heating, which will give the municipalities the right to guarantee a KommuneKredit (a special bank made for municipal guaranteed projects, and therefor with low interest) loan or a mortgage loan with guarantee. This will make it possible to get loans also in rural areas.
• Who must establish the thermonets? The most professional actor is the energy utilities. Therefore, they are the preferred actor to establish and operate the thermonets. This could be in close cooperation with the local community, who are the best partner to convince the local citizens to participate. But the energy utilities are busy rolling out traditional district heating. Therefore, other possibilities are to form local cooperatives or to let private compagnies implement the projects and then let them over to the energy utilities.
• Because of the big national focus on traditional district heating, there is a lack of manpower and the prices on materials has risen to at least the double. The hope is that thermonet can be established by other contractors and that the prices is not rising as much. The reason is that it is not district heating pipes but water pipes that is being used, and therefore the contractors are also “water contractors”, which are not so busy.

The arrangement ended up visiting a local Thermonet, where the participants could see fore themselves and hear from the local users about the Thermonet solution in practise.