Analysis of the district heating potential in French regions using a geographic information system

Abstract

With increasing pressure to meet sustainability and reduced greenhouse gas emission targets, district heating has become widely acknowledged as the future option for the urban heating sector. In France, public subsidies allocated to the development of such systems should reach 350 million euros by 2020, representing a 36% increase compared with 2018. Yet surprisingly little has been done to assess the district heating potential in this country. The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide this assessment. The demand for space heating and domestic hot water in residential and commercial buildings is first determined using data with a resolution of 200 m × 200 m. The linear heat density of the potential district heating networks is then calculated for each of the 5,356,608 grid cells. The 43,565 agglomerations where district heating could reach a linear heat density exceeding 1.5 MWhth/m.a represent 62% of the total heat demand. Even in a scenario where the heat demand uniformly decreases by 50% due to the penetration of energy-efficient buildings, the district heating potential remains 5 times greater than current district heating deliveries. However, the identified potential cannot be fully unlocked due to the widespread use of individual heating systems. French legislation should evolve so as to discourage people from equipping new urban dwellings with individual electric or gas boilers and to encourage the development of district heating networks in dense areas.