District Energy

Here's an article that talks about "district energy".

District energy systems are systems that heat and cool many households from one centralized location. By doing so, there are a number of benefits:
- Economies of scale
- It is relatively simple for the central unit to upgrade its fuel to a more environmentally friendly variety.

I can see this working in apartment buildings, but what about suburban energy consumption? It's definitely much harder to build a district energy system over a sprawling suburbia. But it's the suburbs where (I assume) people generally use more energy in heating and cooling. I assume this because suburban homes are bigger. Also - at least for heating - I've been in buildings where there's so much heat being generated inside the building that a given apartment doesn' t even need to turn on the heat itself.