For immediate release
Press Release | 19 September 2018
Closing existing data gaps: New heating and cooling dataset available for the EU-28
The dataset lays the foundation for the Hotmaps tool, a H&C planning software that is user‐driven, open source and applicable for cities in all 28 EU Member States. It will support public authorities, energy agencies and urban planners in strategic H&C planning on local, regional and national levels. The tool, whose beta version release is foreseen early 2019, will allow to browse through a European map and retrieve information on space heating and hot water demand, CO2 emissions as well as potentials for renewable supply like biomass and solar energy on a spatially disaggregated level. Users will be able to select their regions and geographical scale of interest from a 100x100m resolution up to Country level for the whole EU28.
There is a long-term goal to decarbonise Europe’s energy system and heating and cooling plays a decisive role: the sector is responsible for 51% of final energy use in Europe and about 27% of CO2 emissions. A new open dataset on heating and cooling (H&C) covering the 28 European Union member states at different spatial levels could soon dramatically speed up the planning process of heating and cooling networks. The data has been compiled by a group of experts from the Italian EURAC, the Energy Economics Group of TU Wien and the German Fraunhofer ISI in the framework of Hotmaps, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It will fill current gaps in H&C data for the residential, service, industry and transport sectors.
Data has been collected at national or if available at regional and local levels. It has been generated for four different sectors: residential, service, industry and transport. A comprehensive summary of the data collection process was published in March 2018 and the Hotmaps team is updating the dataset on a regular basis. All datasets are available for free and can be downloaded here. The possibility to browse through the data online and explore additional planning functionalities will be available soon within the beta version of the tool.
Currently the developers are working on the planning functionalities of the toolbox. The software is being tested in the 7 pilot areas involved in the project through the European city network Energy Cities: Kerry County (Ireland), Milton Keynes (UK), Aalborg (Denmark), San Sebastian (Spain), Bistrita (Romania), Geneva (Switzerland) and Frankfurt (Germany).
Further information:
Access the dataset at: https://gitlab.com/hotmaps
Learn more about the Hotmaps dataset and planning tool: https://www.hotmaps-project.eu
Contact: info@hotmaps-project.eu
