Heat demand mapping and district heating assessment in data-pour areas

Buildings represent 40% of the European Union's energy consumption and 36% of its greenhouse gas emissions making it obvious that the decarbonisation of the European Union depends on the sustainable provision of heat in its cities. District heating presents it self as a clear solution to this issue. It is capable of supplying waste and renewable heat from where it is available to where it is needed and can provide a powerful driver for the integration of renewables in the electrical system through the flexibility that power to heat technologies can provide. Due to the inability of long-distance transport of heat, spatial planning and GIS mapping has proven to be a very important tool in heat planning. This usually requires a lot of highly detailed data which is often not available. The research presented in this paper is tackling this issue trough a heat demand mapping and district heating viability assessment method using mostly public databases. The developed method consists of three key steps: assessment of the aggregated heating demand, bottom up mapping used for validation and top down mapping of the entire observed area. The result of the mapping is used in the assessment of the district heating potential based on the difference between the price and levelized cost of heat as well as the assumed cost of the distribution infrastructure. The method has been implemented on the case of Croatia showing a significant potential for the economic utilization of district heating.