Springfield has three industrial plants, each with enough waste energy to heat most of the city’s commercial and institutional buildings. This fact, along with a high degree of energy awareness in the city, made Springfield an obvious candidate for an investigation of district heating. The city used a grant from the Department of Energy, along with some of its own resources, to investigate the possibility of using industrial waste heat to provide space heating and water heating for a group of customers or subscribers. The primary goal of this investigation was to determine if a district heating/cooling system was feasible for Springfield. Economic feasibility was the main question; other goals were to determine the technical feasibility of waste heat recovery from the industries and to identify the best distribution system for Springfield.