Your apartment is heated by the warmth of  human bodies in a nearby Metro station – creepy or cool?

We’re not sure, but French engineers are moving ahead with plans to install the experimental heating system in a public housing project in Paris.

The caloric heat collected from Metro passengers, as well as the heat collected from the train itself, will funnel through an underground corridor to heat exchangers that will push warm air through the building’s pipes.

The system will be able to heat 17 apartments. And, despite being supplemented by district heating, carbon emissions should be cut by a third compared with using a standard boiler heating system.

At this point, the system will not be replicated in other areas of the country’s capital because of expense. Heating this particular building is only possible only because there’s a stairwell connecting the apartments to the Metro, which can be used as a pathway for the heat.

Alternative heating methods are nothing new for Paris, and if the city has its way, 12,000 other apartments will be geothermally heated soon. A planned energy project would soon tap into a mile-deep water reservoir with a natural temperature of 135 degrees Fahrenheit. While the project will cost the city $40 million, it will prevent 14,000 tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.

Image: pedrosimoes7/Flickr

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