District heating has been used since the days of the Roman Empire which employed hot springs to heat the bathhouses and greenhouses. The Wikipedia credits Lockport, NY as having the first successful district heating system which was launched in 1877. The largest commercial steam heating district plant in the world is owned and operated by Consolidated Edison of New York which has been in continuous operation in lower Manhattan since 1882.

The first attempts at CSHP (Central Solar Heating Plants) were begun in the early 1970s in Linköping, Sweden. Graz, Austria reclaimed the rooftop space of four large buildings that are owned by AEVG to deploy 3,556 square meters (approximately 40,000 square feet) of solar collector space. The total solar yield for this installation is estimated to be in the range of 160wW! The Helsinki district cooling system, managed by Helsingin Energia, supplies over 6 terawatt hours of heat annually to roughly 13,000 customer facilities, most of which are residential buildings.