Incentivate new District Heating and Cooling (DHC) in Europe municipalities using low temperatures RES

ongoing

The proposed IncentEU project is focusing on the Scope of working “with municipalities (or relevant key stakeholders) in the development of investment plans for new district heating and/or cooling networks” as scoped within the call. Therefore, it will engage with public regional entities (metropolitan areas) from across Europe (3 countries: Spain, France and Estonia) to establish and implement a shared methodology for heat mapping, pre-feasibility analysis, investment assessment and operational and business model evaluation. The target will be the development of new DHC networks operating under low temperatures and being supplied by the locally available renewable and/or waste heat sources (both industrial and urban waste energy). Beyond the heat sources and the generation technologies, thermal energy storage will also be taken into account to provide flexibility and balance to the network both in daily and seasonal scopes. The overarching goal of IncentEU is to develop exemplary investment plans for developing new district heating and cooling networks fully based on low-temperature renewable energy or waste heat, that kickstart the construction of such facilities in countries with small DHC markets. The investment plans are not only to promote the individual projects but also to set a framework to develop further projects in the country. Hence, IncentEU works with supra-municipal entities capable of fostering investment of multiple projects. The scope involves three regions (Barcelona, Strasbourg and Tallin) representatives of the climatic areas in across Europe. In order to help kickstarting and accelerating the development of new district heating networks IncentEU will set a common methodology for developing the investment plans based on the available knowledge, database, and tools from relevant stakeholders and previous projects.