Abstract
The planning of heating and cooling supply and demand is key to reaching climate and sustainability targets. At the same time, data for planning are scarce for many places in Europe. In this study, we developed an open source dataset of gross floor area and energy demand for space heating and hot water in residential and tertiary buildings at the hectare level for EU28 + Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland. This methodology is based on a top-down approach, starting from a consistent dataset at the country level (NUTS 0), breaking this down to the NUTS 3 level and further to the hectare level by means of a series of regional indicators. We compare this dataset with data from other sources for 20 places in Europe. This process shows that the data for some places fit well, while for others, large differences up to 45% occur. The discussion of these results shows that the other data sources used for this comparison are also subject to considerable uncertainties. A comparison of the developed data with maps based on municipal building stock data for three cities shows that the developed dataset systematically overestimates the gross floor area and heat demand in low density areas and vice versa. We conclude that these data are useful for strategic purposes on aggregated level of larger regions and municipalities. It is especially valuable in locations where no detailed data is available. For detailed planning of heating and cooling infrastructure, local data should be used instead. We believe our work contributes towards a transparent, open source dataset for heating and cooling planning that can be regularly updated and is easily accessible and usable for further research and planning activities.
Highlights
About 50% of the final energy consumption in Europe is spent on heating and cooling, including space heating and cooling, domestic hot water, and processing heat and cold [1]
To understand the quality of the developed gross floor area (GFA) and heat demand (HD) data, we first compare these at the levels of the NUTS 3, local administrative units (LAU) 1, and LAU 2 regions with data from other sources
We explained how we developed a gross floor area (GFA) density map and a heat demand (HD) density map at the level of 100 m × 100 m for the entire EU 28 (+ Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland) within the Hotmaps project
Summary
About 50% of the final energy consumption in Europe is spent on heating and cooling, including space heating and cooling, domestic hot water, and processing heat and cold [1]. The largest share of this demand is covered by fossil energy carriers [2]. The heating and cooling sector needs to be radically transformed in order to be in line with decarbonization targets. In contrast to other energy carriers (e.g., electricity and fuels), which are carried over hundreds (electricity) to thousands (oil, gas) of kilometers, the transmission of thermal energy (heat or cold) is still limited to local or regional systems [3]. The heating and cooling sector, per se, has a strong spatial dimension, which needs to be carefully considered in this transformation process.
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