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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HRE (Heat Roadmap Europe (HRE): Building the knowledge, skills, and capacity required to enable new policies and encourage new investments in the heating and cooling sector)

Teaser

In Europe, there is more heat wasted during electricity production, than required to heat all buildings, and although there is a clear long-term objective to decarbonise the energy system, it is currently unclear how this will be achieved in the heating and cooling sector...

Summary

In Europe, there is more heat wasted during electricity production, than required to heat all buildings, and although there is a clear long-term objective to decarbonise the energy system, it is currently unclear how this will be achieved in the heating and cooling sector.
This huge potential for improvements in the heating sector means that by collecting the vast quantities of waste heat from industries and electricity production, and distributing it with smart district heating grids, it would result not only in monetary savings, but also in considerable CO2 emissions reductions.
The overall objective in the HRE project is to provide new capacity and skills for lead users in the heating and cooling sector, including policymakers, investors, industry, and researchers at local, national, and EU level. This will be achieved by developing the data, tools, methodologies, and results necessary to quantify the impact of implementing more energy efficiency measures on both the demand and supply side of the sector.
The final ambition is to create ‘Heat Roadmaps’ for the 14 EU countries with higher levels of heat demands (which represent approximately 90% of the total heat demands in Europe) and to be able to provide a concrete plan to ensure a decarbonised, cost-efficient and secure energy system for the future. The outputs of this work are expected to prepare the ground for a potential annual investment cost of at least €160 billion per year in the energy supply system alone. Based on preliminary results, these investments will be recommended mostly for energy efficiency measures in the built environment, energy infrastructures (including smart electricity, thermal and gas networks), and the building of efficient infrastructure and energy generation capacity that can integrate a high level of renewable energy (such as excess heat recovery, large and individual-scale heat pumps). Through these investments, there will be an expectation of achieving annual primary energy savings in the heating and cooling sector of over 2000 TWh, and using over 1750 TWh/year of renewable and excess heat (if these investments are actually made in the coming 20-30 years). By creating scenarios and strategies for the 14 largest EU energy systems, Heat Roadmap Europe hopes to contribute tangibly to the transition of the European energy system.

Work performed

Halfway through the project, HRE has refined methodologies for mapping heating and cooling demand and resources in the EU at a level higher than any current projects. The mapping done in HRE has shown the 2015 energy demand per hectare, allowing a localized analysis of what the heating and cooling requirements are, and which potential sources could be used to satisfy these demands. Peta 4.2 shows the explicit spatially potential for renewable resources and identifies excess heat potentials in Europe for 11 different industry sectors. Additionally, Peta 4.2 allows for the calculation of the potential cost of heating and cooling infrastructures. Its online interface has allowed people to interact with their local heat demands, with the website having been visited over 14.000 times since it was launched.
The profiling of the heating and cooling demand in WP3 has given the most detailed overview available to date, in terms of fuels, conversion technology and building type, of the energy being used in 2015 in the heating and cooling sector, and forecasts these trends (under a Baseline scenario) for 2030 and 2050. The outputs provide a detailed overview of how heating and cooling is being done in the residential sector, 8 service subsectors, and 8 industry subsectors. The inclusion of cooling demand and energy carriers, using a methodology newly developed in Heat Roadmap Europe, allows for a more detailed, quantified analysis of the role of cooling in the future EU energy system than previously possible. The inclusion of detailed industry sectors for the first time, of which almost half is process heat over 200 °C allows for a genuinely comprehensive analysis of the entire heating and cooling sector in Europe.
Choosing 2015 rather than 2010 as a starting date for both WP2 and WP3, ahead of the 2015 Eurostat availability, caused some delay in this work (WP3) but ensures that when the project concludes in 2019, the data and findings will remain highly relevant to the policy developments being made. However, both WPs have been concluded and Peta 4.2 and the results of the profiling and Baseline are now available. These outputs are already in use, most notably by staff of DG ENERGY, to present the magnitude of the heating and cooling sector in Europe.
The energy modelling work conducted in the Heat Roadmap Europe (WP5) has combined the JRC-EU-TIMES and EnergyPLAN modelling tools, allowing for a key integration of their strengths and a comprehensive overview of the energy system performance. For the Baseline projection, the JRC-EU-TIMES has allowed for an optimized energy system development, assuming the implementation of current policy, but no new developments.
To develop scenarios in WP6, the energy system analyses tools are combined with cost and potential curves for energy savings in the (sub-) sectors profiled. Since the energy savings potentials build on the work done in WP3, delays in the profiling has resulted in delays in the dependent work in WP4. In addition, the unforeseen staff changes in WP4 disrupted the flow and momentum of the analysis. However, these delays are not hindering the delivery of work planned in WP6, and should not lead to a delay in the final delivery of the Heat Roadmaps. Currently preliminary data is being used from WP4 in WP6.

Final results

HRE has been an important contributor to the construction of knowledge in the heat and cooling sector. The novel knowledge introduced by HRE4 is identified by key achievements that go beyond the state of the art. HRE builds on results from previous projects and is innovative and pioneering in regards to the level og detail and comprehensiveness in the results on data, mapping and energy system analyses. In particular the most advanced results of the project so far are:

WP2. Improvements to the first ever pan-European thermal atlas (Peta) of the heating and cooling demand in Europe at 100m x 100m: more countries at hectare level (1st time), cooling, resources (1st ever quantification of renewable resources available for district heating networks in Europe, including large-scale solar thermal, direct geothermal, and heat pumps), most complete ever database of excess heat volumes available from power plants, waste incineration, and industry in Europe.

WP3. Profiling of the countries’ heat demands based on delivered energy and energy carriers (1st ever quantification of the heating and cooling demand in Europe) – clarity in a sector that is normally very hard to get out of standardized Eurostat data. For 2015 and in a baseline from 2015 towards 2050.

WP 5 and 6. JRC-linking of innovative energy models (EnergyPLAN - hourly system model with multi-annual evolution of energy system). The tool uses advantages of both and combines to form a better degree of understanding of the two.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.heatroadmap.eu/.