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Energy system optimisation models (ESOMs) are widely used for policy analyses particularly on topics related to climate change mitigation and renewable energy transition. Using ESOM to investigate regions that potentially require significant expansion of grid infrastructure requires incorporation of grid expansion problem within the optimisation. This study presents the development of SELARU, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for spatially explicit long-term energy infrastructure planning. The model is used to investigate the case study of Indonesia using various spatial treatments to demonstrate the impact of detailed spatial depiction of grid expansion. Results reveal significant difference in renewable energy deployment trajectory (up to 315% increase in generation capacity) between high-resolution spatial depiction of grid expansion vis-à-vis non spatially explicit energy system optimisation. SELARU’s high-resolution energy system optimization modelling also provides detailed information on the geographical extent of grid expansion requirement, which provides more realistic insights on governance challenges of renewable energy transition. Careful consideration of spatial representation is crucial when ESOM is used to evaluate scenarios that concern technology selection such as renewable energy deployment or climate change mitigation.

This document is part of the work package that analyses ePANACEA’s Dissemination, exploitation and replication potential. This document builds on the project report “Description of current EPC related policy framework in implementing countries”, where the current state of policy framework in the five ePANACEA pilot countries plus Germany are presented. The focus countries are Austria (focus Styria), Belgium (focus Flanders), Finland, Germany, Greece and Spain. In this past report, the current state of different selected topic areas were described based on literature review and expert interview. This material prepared the ground for the present report. In addition, we performed internet research on EPCs issued upon real estate transactions to build an EPC database and provide an exploratory analysis. Finally, the current state and pathways of two different scenarios: moderate uptake and high uptake are described. This is the main contribution of the present report, which will have a follow up report “The potential impact of innovative EPC methods on energy savings and related investments”.

This study analysed one of Europe’s most unexplored energy fields: process cooling (PC). The work assessed the final energy consumption (FEC) for PC of the European Union (and United Kingdom) with a 2016 baseline. An extensive literature review of datasets and journal papers was performed to address knowledge gaps by creating a high-quality dataset with factual accuracy, reliability, and completeness. Installed cooling units, equivalent full load hours, energy efficiency levels (seasonal energy performance ratio), and capacities installed were the essential investigated parameters to perform the FEC calculations. The latter were referred to as vapour compression (VC) chillers (air-to-water or water-to-water). Overall, the results of the EU (plus UK) FEC for the PC sector resulted in more than 110 TWh/year, accounting for around 10% of the total energy consumption for electricity in Europe. It is worth mentioning that several non-VC technologies are utilized for PC purposes in various sectors and subsectors primarily in the industry and the tertiary sectors, which are rapidly growing and, therefore, their cooling consumption is increasing. The current research paper aimed to raise awareness of the PC sector by supporting the European Union policies toward a more sustainable and decarbonized industry in the upcoming decades.

European Union (EU) legislation is increasingly embracing the energy efficiency first (EE1st) principle. This principle seeks to prioritise energy efficiency measures whenever these involve lower costs to society than generators, networks and other energy supply options while achieving the same outcomes. This study contributes to the quantitative evidence on the relevance of EE1st by modelling the impact of moderate to ambitious end-use energy efficiency measures on energy supply and the associated system cost under a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions constraint by 2050. These measures focus on the EU building sector and include both building retrofits (e.g. wall insulation) and efficient products (e.g. lighting). The results indicate that implementing more ambitious energy saving measures reduces the total electricity, heat and hydrogen capacities needed to achieve the net-zero target. Reducing energy use in buildings by at least 21% between 2020 and 2050 is essential to avoid excessive energy supply costs. This requires actions that go well beyond business-as-usual trends. Reductions of around 30% could be justified on the grounds of (i) high fossil fuel prices and (ii) multiple impacts (e.g. health benefits). Overall, the outcomes provide reasonable justification for the EE1st principle. To put the principle into practice, policy actions such as doubling building renovation rates and setting higher energy efficiency targets are key.

Background: Residential buildings with heat pumps show promising possibilities for demand-side management. The operation optimization of such heating systems can lead to cost reduction and, at the same time, change electricity consumption patterns, which is especially prevalent in the case of a variable price signal. In this work, we deal with the following question: How does the volatility of a variable retail electricity price change the energy consumption of buildings with a smart energy management system? Methods: In this context, we take Austria as an example and aggregate the findings of individual households to the national stock of single-family houses. This is done by simulating and optimzing heating operation in single representative buildings. The aggregation is done based on national building information statistics. Results: This part of the Austrian building stock could shift 19.7 GWh of electricity per year through thermal inertia using a real-time electricity price from 2021. We show the future potential under the assumption of three electricity price trends for 2030, representing different decarbonisation ambition levels. The trends show that higher decarbonisation levels which lead to higher electricity prices increase the incentive to shift electric loads. Conclusions: Real time pricing turns out to be an effective incentive for buildings to shift electric loads by pre-heating the building mass. However, cost savings for individuals are relatively low which is why additional monetary incentives are needed to tap into that potential. Increased daily peak-to-peak demand from these buildings has to put into perspective to the overall grid load.

Among other critical actions, putting the Energy Efficiency First (EE1st) principle into practice requires quantitative evidence on the extent to which demand-side resources (e.g. building retrofits) in various contexts are generally preferable over supply-side resources (e.g. networks). These contexts range from municipal heat planning, over electricity network investment, up to the development of high-level policy strategies for Member States and the European Union (EU) at large. In previous quantitative work, the ENEFIRST project demonstrated for the EU building sector that end-use energy efficiency measures can effectively reduce the need for energy supply infrastructures in transitioning to net-zero emission levels, while also bringing a variety of co-benefits or multiple impacts. The present report provides additional quantitative evidence on EE1st by investigating five model-based case studies. The scope of these case studies is deliberately narrower compared with the EU-wide analysis, providing opportunity for a detailed evaluation of demand- and supply-side resource options in different contexts of building types (residential, non-residential), infrastructures (electricity, district heating, gas) and local conditions (weather, costs, etc.). The key findings of the five case studies are as follows: ❶ Cumulated energy savings based on cost-optimal analysis | If carried out within the next 10 years, single stage building renovations come with a lower cost than stepwise renovations. In both cases, exhausting the potential of deep renovation by achieving the highest energy saving is critical. The results support the instrument of renovation passports for building owners to enable informed renovation decisions. ❷ Building retrofits and district heating systems | District heating networks can be economically viable in scenarios with high refurbishment rates under different climate conditions and city typologies. The network’s ability to combine multiple heat sources balances the impact of high fuel prices. Municipal heat planning can help lower total cost of heat and reduce the risk of energy poverty. ❸ Heat pumps: Efficiency, CO₂ emissions and the value of flexible heat pumps | By using buildings’ thermal mass, residential heat pumps can provide additional flexibility to the power system. Depending on the building type, envelope, and location, the flexibility potential is between 18%-35% of the heat pump energy consumption. The economic profitability strongly depends on the regulation, fees, taxes, etc. ❹ Strategic energy planning in commercial areas | Thermal retrofits for office and education buildings can cost-effectively reduce the need for individual heat supply, distributed generation, heat networks, utility-scale generation, and seasonal heat storage. Advanced retrofit packages can possibly pay off within 13 to 14 years, making building retrofits a critical demand-side resource in the scope of the EE1st principle. ❺ The trade-off between energy efficient household appliances and new electricity generation | Efficient household appliances (e.g. refrigerators) can reasonably substitute for new renewable, fossil and hydrogen-based electricity generation. Cost-effective savings are in the range of 3.8%-19.4%, compared to an inefficient base case. Ecodesign standards and labelling are key instruments to achieve these savings. In conclusion, integrated energy systems modelling is key to make the EE1st principle a reality. Practitioners can use model-based evidence to help formulate strategies and to put together a sound package of policy instruments for EE1st. At the same time, there remain critical challenges to quantitative modelling in the scope of EE1st – including the proper consideration and aggregation of multiple impacts, the selection of discount rates, and others.

The recast of the Energy Efficiency Directive proposed by the European Commission as part of the Fit-for-55 package (July 2021) states, in its new Article 3, that the Energy Efficiency First (EE1st) principle should apply to planning, policy and major investment decisions related to energy systems as well as non-energy sectors, where those sectors have an impact on energy consumption and energy efficiency. Planning practices, policies and investment frameworks shall consider energy systems as a whole, with resources available on both sides (supply and demand), and interactions between demand and supply. This means that policies and regulatory frameworks dealing with energy supply and infrastructures should consider demand-side options as alternatives to increasing supply, thereby valuing the contributions of energy savings and flexibility to energy systems and, where possible, other objectives (e.g. the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improved health). On the other side, policies and regulatory frameworks dealing with energy end-use efficiency should consider their impact beyond the demand side, as they can also have an impact on supply (e.g. on the investments needed to deliver a specific level of energy services). The Energy Union put EE1st at the core of the energy transition and has enshrined it in various pieces of legislation. The Governance Regulation of the Energy Union ((EU) 2018/1999) has defined EE1st (see Article 2 (18)) and made EE1st a guiding principle for energy policies: the regulation set requirements to ensure that national energy efficiency targets are defined as part of the overall planning exercise reported by Member States in their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). However, the NECPs (submitted in 2019-2020) provided limited information on how the Member States define and plan to implement the principle. The reported information was limited to: • referring to EE1st as a principle that has been considered in the preparation of the NECP • stressing the importance of energy efficiency policies and measures as “being the first pillar of the energy transition” or as the “key horizontal policy” • referring to demand-side participation in energy markets • a few countries linking energy efficiency with investment decisions or other decarbonisation measures in general (Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and Portugal) Implementing the EE1st principle has proved to be a difficult task for Member States, at least partly because EE1st is still a relatively new concept. This report provides a set of recommendations for Member States (MS) to support the implementation of EE1st in their policies. The analysis builds on previous work done in the ENEFIRST project, where policy approaches for each main policy area (buildings, the power sector, district heating) were analysed in detail, providing the basis for guidelines for integrated approaches. It takes the lessons learnt from the analysis ofthree countries (Germany, Hungary and Spain) and translates them into recommendations that are applicable to all MS. Most of the current policies are not designed around the EE1st principle, but they can be adapted to reflect EE1st, and new policies can be designed to integrate it. EE1st, however, cannot be simply mandated: its implementation requires dedicated effort from the Members States and stakeholders involved in policy design, capacity building and cross-cutting cooperation. To be effective, EE1st must be constantly considered when implementing policies at national and local level. Member States, national and local authorities need to adjust their practices and increase capacity building to secure its integration and avoid silo-thinking. Only by investing time and resources to continuously integrate EE1st in day-to-day practices, would it be possible to achieve the benefits of adopting a systemic approach to policy making that embraces EE1st and goes beyond the classic portfolio of energy efficiency policy and supply side measures. Implementing EE1st also implies a multi-level and multi-stakeholder coordination so that the decisions made by public authorities, regulated entities and market players be aligned with the overall integrated planning, and that national, regional and municipal planning be coherent. The adoption of the fit-for-55 package constitutes a distinctive opportunity to further enhance EE1st in EU legislation (e.g. Energy Efficiency Directive, Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, Electricity Directive). A full implementation of this and existing energy legislation would considerably help move the EE1st principle further, even if it is not sufficient to get it systematically implemented across all areas. The European Commission’s sectoral guidelines will still be needed. Finally, adopting EE1st as a decision and planning principle contributes to better decision-making beyond climate and energy policies: if embraced, it can improve how policies are designed and how investment decisions are assessed and made. It can also serve as a delivery mechanism of societal benefits, such as the reduction of inequalities, poverty alleviation and lowering adaptation pressures. Systematically implementing EE1st would bring benefits across all areas and enable a better management of existing resources.

The principle of Energy Efficiency First (EE1st) is gaining traction in the political debate. As set out in previous reports of ENEFIRST, the principle aims to consider and prioritise investments in demand side resources (e.g. building retrofits) whenever these cost less or deliver more value than default energy infrastructure (e.g. networks). Meanwhile, energy efficiency is increasingly associated with a variety of environmental, economic, and social benefits known as multiple impacts (MIs). It is often argued that taking thorough account of the EE1st principle in energy-related investment and policymaking means to incorporate MIs in the decision-making process to ensure a fair comparison of resource options. This concerns various decision-making instances – including the impact assessments prepared by the European Commission, infrastructure planning conducted by regulated network companies, up to individual building owners when assessing the costs and benefits of different building renovation options. However, a theoretical account of how the concepts of EE1st and MIs fit together is still missing. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, based on an expert workshop and a literature review, it aims to integrate the theoretical state of knowledge on the concepts of EE1st and MIs. This involves questions of how various MIs can be aggregated in the form of cost-benefit analysis (CBA), multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and other frameworks to inform decisions on what resource options actually provide greater value. We argue that, in itself, each of these frameworks has important limitations, which is why none of them can replace human judgement. For instance, CBA has inherent problems in coming up with robust monetary estimates of individual MIs, while MCA struggles with ensuring objectivity and representative stakeholder involvement. Another important issue is how the evaluation perspective (societal, private, etc.) affects the selection of MIs that should ideally be taken into account in quantitative assessments. Each of these perspectives is shown to have distinct application areas and practitioners should make sure to apply a consistent perspective when quantifying and aggregating MIs to compare resource options in the scope of EE1st. The second objective of this report is to address the ongoing lack of quantitative evidence on individual MIs, especially in the context of the EE1st principle. We substantiate the previously developed ENEFIRST scenarioswith bottom-up estimates of MIs. The key idea behind this so-called socio-environmental assessment is to move away from the previously used indicator of energy system cost that is limited to capital costs, fuel costs and other financial metrics. By investigating two selected types of MIs, we obtain a more comprehensive picture of the true societal value of end-use energy efficiency in the building sector. One type of MIs investigated are air pollution and climate change impacts. Even though the ENEFIRST scenarios are all set to reach the common objective of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050, we find significant differences in cumulative emissions and ensuing costs from both air pollutants and greenhouse gases. The inclusion of these cost estimates significantly enhances the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency measures from a societal viewpoint. Another type of MIs in this assessment are indoor comfort improvements. A new method was developed to quantify comfort gains as a result of building retrofits for the entire building stocks of individual Member States. The results indicate significant comfort gains for countries with poor efficiency of the building stock in the base year. As a result of the modelled retrofit measures, the share of poorly heated floor space below 18°C can be reduced by more than 30 percentage points, with ensuing benefits for health, well-being and workforce productivity. In conclusion, any model-based assessment or scenarios in the scope of the EE1st principle should be substantiated with quantitative and qualitative estimates of different MIs to ensure a fair comparison of demand and supply side resources and thus to enable informed decisions on technology investment.

This paper presents an overview of policy frameworks for district heating (DH) in Europe. We develop a classification for policy aspects addressing DH, comprising regulation of ownership, prices, metering, consumer grid connection, third party access as well as support schemes and carbon taxes. This classification builds on existing literature and expert assessments collected in an online survey and interviews. The relevance of the paper lies in giving a comprehensive picture of the existing policy frameworks for DH in 23 European countries. For the overview, the countries are clustered along assigned categories. It is shown that the policy frameworks for DH can be clustered into five distinguishable groups. While some countries apply very strict regulations in special DH laws, others rely on less regulatory intervention, both with varying degrees of support for DH in place. The different policy frameworks are discussed in the context of the diffusion of DH and the integration of renewable and waste heat in DH. This analysis shows that high shares of DH and high shares of renewable and waste heat in DH can be observed in countries with a high degree of regulation as well as in countries with less regulatory intervention in DH markets.

This study investigates insights concerning the future of the cooling market of the European Union (plus the United Kingdom) and its possible development for the upcoming decade (until 2030). In this manuscript, a qualitative model—Porter’s five forces analysis (PFFA)—and a quantitative tool—multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)—have been applied to produce a forecast and a corresponding validation technique. It has been observed that the MCDA tool came to a similar conclusion as the PFFA methodology, highlighting that, presumably, the cooling market will continue to grow moderately, mainly thanks to research and development (R&D) as the central driving force. Moreover, the latter is strictly connected with R&D developments, economic crises, and the welfare of the European population. Additionally, in this study, an extensive survey conducted on interviews of experts throughout each European country confirmed the slightly positive future developments forecast up to 2030 from the quantitative and qualitative methods mentioned above. The results of the study describe a steady growth of the cooling market in Europe until 2030 of about 1–2% annual increase, for a total gain of 24%.

This study investigates Europe’s space cooling energy field. The work aims to assess the European Union (plus the United Kingdom) final energy consumption for space cooling in both the residential and service sectors with 2016 as a baseline. An extensive literature review of datasets and journal papers has been conducted to fill the knowledge gaps of the investigated energy branch. The European space cooling market is mainly dominated by vapour compression (VC) technologies which, in this study, have been grouped as room air conditioners (RACs) and centralized air conditioners (CACs). These technology groups have been investigated, and their installed capacities, energy efficiency levels (seasonal energy efficiency ratio—SEER), equivalent full load hours (EFLHs), and amount of space cooling units installed have been identified as essential parameters to calculate the final energy consumption for space cooling. Overall, the total value of the European final energy consumption for the space cooling sector, including both the residential and service sectors, results in 106 TWh/year.

There is an increased interest in the district-scale energy transition within interdisciplinary research community. Agent-based modelling presents a suitable approach to address variety of questions related to policies, technologies, processes, and the different stakeholder roles that can foster such transition. However, it is a largely complex and versatile methodology which hinders its broader uptake by researchers as well as improved results. This state-of-the-art review focuses on the application of agent-based modelling for exploring policy interventions that facilitate the decarbonisation (i.e., energy transition) of districts and neighbourhoods while considering stakeholders’ social characteristics and interactions. We systematically select and analyse peer-reviewed literature and discuss the key modelling aspects, such as model purpose, agents and decision-making logic, spatial and temporal aspects, and empirical grounding. The analysis reveals that the most established agent-based models’ focus on innovation diffusion (e.g., adoption of solar panels) and dissemination of energy-saving behaviour among a group of buildings in urban areas. We see a considerable gap in exploring the decisions and interactions of agents other than residential households, such as commercial and even industrial energy consumers (and prosumers). Moreover, measures such as building retrofits and conversion to district energy systems involve many stakeholders and complex interactions between them that up to now have hardly been represented in the agent-based modelling environment. Hence, this work contributes to better understanding and further improving the research on transition towards decarbonised society.

This paper addresses the following question: How can smart energy management system (SEMS) influence the residential electricity consumption at both individual household and national level? First, we developed an hourly optimization model for individual households. The energy cost of an individual household is minimized under given assumptions on outside temperature, radiation, (dynamic) electricity price, and feed-in tariff. By comparing the optimization to the reference scenario, we show the impact of SEMS on grid-electricity consumption and photovoltaic (PV) self-consumption at the individual household level. Second, to we aggregate the results to the national level, we constructed a detailed building stock taking Austria as an example. By aggregating the results of 2112 representative households, we investigate the impact of SEMS in the residential building stock on the national electricity system. As a result, we found that for individual single-family-houses (SFHs) with PV (no battery) and heat pump adoption, SEMS can significantly reduce the grid-electricity consumption up to 40.7% for a well-insulated building. At the national level we found that, for the buildings with 5 kWp PV but without hot water tank or battery storage, SEMS can still reduce the grid-electricity consumption by 7.4% by using the building mass as thermal storage.

This report aims to develop a methodological concept for a model-based analysis of the Energy Efficiency First (EE1st) principle for the EU-27 that iscarried out and analysed in subsequent reports of the ENEFIRST project. The objective of this energy system analysis is to investigate what level of demand and supply-side resources should be deployed to provide the greatest value to the EU's society in transitioning to net-zero GHG emissions for the building sector by 2050. On the demand side, the analysis focuses on the resource option of end-use energy efficiency in buildings, investigating the contributions of thermal retrofits, efficient appliances, and other measures towards the net-zero target. On the supply side, the analysis quantifies the possible deployment and costs of various generation, network and storage options for the provision of electricity, district heat and gas products for the building sector. By determining what resource portfolio should be adopted under given framework conditions to reach the 2050 target, this analysis can help decision-makers identify priorities for policy design and technology investment. The analysis covers a set of three model-based scenarios. Each of these scenarios is geared to reach the 2050 target of net-zero emissions in the EU-27. However, the scenarios differ in terms of the contribution of different resource options towards target achievement: (1) The LOWEFF scenario assumes that energy use in buildings is decarbonized primarily via the use of renewable-based supply-side resources. (2) The MEDIUMEFF scenario is characterized by an even deployment of demand- and supply-side resources. (3) In the HIGHEFF scenario, end-use energy efficiency measures in buildings are viewed as the most favourable decarbonisation option for the European energy system by 2050, representing a future in which the EE1st principle is comprehensively applied in energy system planning and investment. To capture the interactions between the building sector and the supply side of the EU energy system, this analysis couples four bottom-up energy models: INVERT, FORECAST, ENERTILE and NETHEAT. As such, the analysis features a comprehensive coverage of the major end-uses (space heating, water heating, space cooling, electrical appliances, lighting, cooking) in residential and non-residential buildings. On the supply side, operation and investment of both power and district heating systems are explicitly modelled. To measure the performance of the three scenarios, the outputs of the analysis are analysed in two respects. For one thing, the so-called techno-economic assessment focuses on the indicator of energy system costs, indicating the sum of capital expenditures and operating expenses needed to meet the energy service demand in the building sector. Supported by additional indicators, this assessment helps determine the extent to which society is better off – in pure monetary and technical terms – if demand-side resource were prioritized in energy planning and operation. For another, the so-called socio-environmental assessment investigates selected multiple impacts of the resource configurations computed in the different scenarios. Where possible, these impacts are quantified and monetized using dedicated methodologies. In sum, this model-based analysis addresses the four criteria of quantitative assessments for the EE1st principle: (1) It features an integrated model-based appraisal of demand- and supply-side resources in the building sector and associated supply sectors (electricity, district heat, natural gas and hydrogen). (2) There is a common planning and policy objective across all scenarios of reaching net-zero GHG emissions for the EU building sector by the year 2050 while meeting demand for energy services. (3) All costs and benefits are evaluated from a societal perspective, rather than a private one. (4) A systematic appraisal framework is used to compile all relevant cost and benefit items, including a selection of multiple impacts.

District heating (DH) can become a key infrastructure for achieving climate targets in the heating sector. In order to support the uptake of renewables in the DH sector, the European Commission proposed to open DH infrastructures to third parties. This will allow independent heat producers to supply heat produced from renewable energy sources and from waste heat to consumers connected to the grid. This paper develops a better understanding of the complexity associated with the introduction of third party grid access (TPA). We will analyse the heterogeneous institutional set-up of DH markets in the EU and discuss competition and market boundaries in the heat market. Based on this, the paper investigates the technical, regulatory and economic challenges that arise from the practical implementation of TPA. We conclude that TPA alone will not be sufficient to support the expansion of renewables in the DH sector. Complementary policy measures will be necessary to transform the DH sector towards 4th generation DH systems that will become an integrated element of a smart energy system.

The European Union plans to shift parts of its economy towards a biobased system commonly referred to as a bioeconomy in order to reduce emissions and fossil fuel dependence. Biomass exhibits lower carbon densities, higher moisture contents, and is more heterogeneous when compared to the feedstock basis of the current economy. In this paper, we simulate generic biomass-to-end-use chains to compare economic performances of the three technologically most advanced pre-treatment options for biogenic raw materials. Exemplary cellulosic biomass feedstocks are computed to be processed to pellets, torrefied pellets and pyrolysis oil based on current data from previous research and demonstration projects. Various distribution options are considered for the resulting densified bioenergy carriers to be finally converted to heat, electricity and liquid biofuels. We find that the discussed densified bioenergy carriers could compete in the existing residential heating market. Furthermore, large-scale conversion facilities like coal co-firing and gasification could profit from cost reductions for torrefied pellets when compared to conventional pellets. To reach commoditisation of these bioenergy carriers as well as full commercialisation of the respective technologies, upscaling would have to start now possibly by establishing a residential heating market based on torrefied pellets where framework conditions are most favourable.

Planning the required energy infrastructure for the energy transition is a crucial task for various neighbourhood concepts, such as positive energy districts. However, energy planning often comes with the challenges of data shortages and a lack of comparability among solutions for different districts. This work aims to enable this comparability by introducing an approach for categorising districts according to parameters that are relevant for the planning of neighbourhood energy infrastructures. Four parameters (climate, floor space index, heating demand and share of residential buildings) and their respective ranges (bands) were derived from the literature. Additionally, this work visualised the combination of all parameter bands across Europe to conveniently showcase districts that are comparable according to the selected parameters. This approach and its visualisation could be used in urban planning to share knowledge from existing energy district projects with those planned in comparable districts.

The scope of this investigation is to analyze recent advances in district cooling (DC) in Europe (European Union plus the United Kingdom (EU27+UK)). The study focuses on data and information from the past decade and draws a picture for the year 2016. To date, in contrast to the European district heating market, the European DC branch has barely been explored in scientific literature. In the current paper, the data that describe the actual DC market in the EU27+UK—which includes the quantity of DC plants, equivalent full-load hours, and installed capacities as well as the values for seasonal energy efficiency—are collected and then explored using a bottom-up approach. The results indicate that DC is responsible for a minor part of the useful energy demand of Europe for cooling with around 3 TWh/y. Overall, the share of the useful energy demand for DC corresponds with 1 to 2% of the EU27+UK useful energy demand. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the penetration of DC varies considerably from country to country, and eight European Member States appear to not have district cooling systems at all. Lastly, it is observed that DC has been slowly but constantly growing in Europe for decades and is characterized by a high growth potential, particularly in the service sector.

The aim of this study is to investigate, review, and assess the recent advances of alternative cooling technologies using traditional vapor compression (VC) systems as a baseline. Around 99% of the final energy consumption used for cooling in the current European market (European Union plus the United Kingdom (EU27 + UK) is supplied by VC technologies. In comparison, the remaining 1% is produced by thermally driven heat pumps (TDHPs). This study focuses on providing a complete taxonomy of cooling technologies. While the EU heating sector is broadly explored in scientific literature, a significant lack of data and information is present in the cooling sector. This study highlights technologies that can potentially compete and eventually replace VC systems within the decade (2030). Among others, the most promising of these are membrane heat pump, transcritical cycle, Reverse Brayton (Bell Coleman cycle), and absorption cooling. However, the latter mentioned technologies still need further research and development (R&D) to become fully competitive with VC technologies. Notably, there are no alternative cooling technologies characterized by higher efficiency and less cost than VC technologies in the EU market.

Implementation of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) varies significantly across EU Member States in terms of scope and available information, resulting in limited reliability, compliance, market penetration or user acceptance. This paper, therefore, investigates the end-user perspectives towards future development of EPCs to support EPC schemes in the EU. Without a full insight into what end-user's demand and need, it is impossible to make accurate assessments of how EPCs will become key drivers for deep renovation, environmental impact reduction and healthy buildings. A survey with 2563 end-users of EPCs was conducted on ten innovative EPC features in five EU countries (Denmark, Greece, Portugal, Poland, and Romania), including building owners and occupants to learn about their needs and expectations. The results highlight that the features are viewed most positively if homeowners or tenants are energy conscious and energy performance is an important aspect when buying or renting property. Furthermore, the insights gathered through the analysis of the survey provide suggestions for public authorities on how EPC methodologies could be customised to support the advancement of EPC schemes. Further work includes testing and validation of methodologies that are being developed in different EU Member States as a part of the H2020 X-tendo project.

In the framework of the Paris Agreement, the European Union (EU) will have to firmly set decarbonization targets to 2050. However, the viability on these targets is an ongoing discussion. The European Commission has made several propositions for energy and climate ""roadmaps"". In this regard, this paper contributes by analyzing alternative pathways derived in a unique modelling process. As part of the SET-Nav project, we defined four pathways to a clean, secure and efficient energy system-taking different routes. Two key uncertainties shape the SET-Nav pathways: the level of cooperation (i.e. cooperation versus entrenchment) and the level of decentralization (i.e. decentralization versus path dependency). All four pathways achieve an 85-95% emissions reduction by 2050. We include a broad portfolio of options under distinct framework conditions by comprehensively analyzing all energy-consuming and energy-providing sectors as well as the general economic conditions. We do this by applying a unique suite of linked models developed in the SET-Nav project. By linking more than ten models, we overcome the traditional limitation of models that cover one single sector while at the same time having access to detail sectoral data and expertise. In this paper, we focus on the implications for the energy demand sectors (buildings, transport, and industry) and the electricity supply mix in Europe and compare our insights of the electricity sector to the scenarios of the recent European Commission (2018a) report ""A clean Planet for all"".

COP21 led to an agreed target of keeping the increase in global average temperature well below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. Due to its high potential for decarbonisation, the building stock will have to contribute a reduction of at least 85–95% in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions until 2050. Policy-driven scenario analysis is, therefore, important for assisting policy makers who are called upon to develop a corresponding framework to achieve those targets. The research questions of this paper are (1) Do long-term scenarios (in particular those labelled as ambitious) of energy demand in buildings reflect the COP21 target? (2) If not: What are reasons for the gap in terms of scenario assumptions, in particular, regarding the policy framework in the corresponding scenarios? The method builds on following steps: (1) analysis of GHG-emission reduction in scenarios from the policy-driven, bottom-up model Invert/EE-Lab; (2) compare scenarios among each other and analyse if they are in line with Paris targets; (3) discuss possible explanations for any gaps and the implications on future modelling work and policy making. Results show that scenarios labelled as being “ambitious” for several EU MSs achieve GHG-emission reductions of 56–96% until 2050. However, just 27% of these ambitious scenarios achieve reductions above 85%. The reason is that policies for most of the modelled scenarios were developed together with policy makers and stakeholders, who—for different reasons—were not willing to go beyond a certain stringency in the modelled instruments. In particular, this was the case for regulatory instruments, which show to be essential for achieving ambitious climate targets.

This paper aims to calculate potential energy savings for space heating and hot water by 2030 for the Lithuanian building sector by implementing energy efficiency solutions. Policy recommendations are derived by showing which buildings and energy efficiency measures should be addressed in order to determine the full energy saving potential in the most effective way. Different cost curves for energy savings potential are applied, and these curves show the investor perspective and overall economic perspective. Final energy demand can be reduced by 56% by year 2030 if the least-cost energy efficiency solutions for each building type are selected. Energy performance class A implementation for the apartment buildings built before 1990 and supplied by district heating is the most cost-effective measure. If we consider the overall economic perspective, energy performance class A++ (deep renovation) for the same buildings is the most cost-effective measure. The results call for (I) policies to support building renovation that address buildings with low energy performance instead of subsidising energy prices and (II) policies promoting deep renovation (A+, A++) in order to avoid lock-in effects and ensure the transition of the Lithuanian building stock towards nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEBs).

District heating in general is seen as an important opportunity to decarbonise the heating sector especially in urban areas and therefore important to reach European and global climate goals. In this case study we analyse possible future scenarios for the city of Brasov, Romania. Like in many other cities in Eastern Europe a district heating system exists in the city, however, facing severe challenges like old and inefficient infrastructure and loss of consumers due to unreliability of supply over the last decades. This work assesses the impact of different policies on the feasibility of renewable and efficient heating under various conditions and suggests favourable policy frameworks to ensure an economically and ecologically viable future heating system for the city. Keywords: District heating, Heat savings and supply, Policy assessment, Eastern Europe, Romania

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the resilience of possible future electricity and heating systems in regard to climate change and fuel price shocks. The dynamical simulation model HiREPS of the Austrian and German electricity, heating and cooling sectors was used for this analysis. The electricity generation cost and changes in the required secured capacity were used as indicators for the resilience of the energy system. The results show, that the analysed changes in the natural gas price have larger impact on the electricity generation cost than weather variability between different years or climate change. Especially the fossil fuel based scenario showed high sensitivity to the gas price. Analysis of the required secured capacity shows, that in the last quarter of the 21st century the annual maximum residual loads are growing and are dominated by strong cooling demand peaks. Promoting passive cooling options, efficient building designs and options for a controlled down regulation of cooling devices seems to be advisable to avoid installing large thermal power plant backup capacities. The evaluated climate model simulations show only small changes in photovoltaic, wind and hydro power generation for 2051−2080 in Austria and Germany.

In order to reach sustainable development, the EU plans to expand the production of renewable resources and their conversion into food, feed, biobased products and bioenergy. Therefore also advanced biobased products like e.g. polymers are discussed to substitute their fossil based counterparts which are highly relevant commodities in terms of volumes. The present paper aims to assess the magnitudes of possible substitution shares as well as their implications on biomass demand in the EU28. Therefore scenarios are calculated based on a top-down estimation of current fossil based- and a literature analysis on biobased capacities, respective expectations and targets. Demands for biogenic building blocks are derived using conversion efficiencies and finally energy contents of underlying biogenic carbon carriers are calculated which could be deployed either for energy or material utilisation. We find lowest substitution potentials for biobased surfactants and highest for biodegradable polymers as well as potentials in a same order of magnitude for more durable polymers and biobased bitumen. Compared to average literature estimates for moderate and ambitious bioenergy scenarios, material utilisation could reach up to 4% and 11% shares in 2050 in a joint biobased subsector respectively. However, our scenarios are based on relatively poor data availability. Clearer definitions of products and feedstocks are needed, official monitoring has to be implemented, EU wide substitution targets must be set and pre-treatment and conversion technologies have to be introduced and diffused if we want to discuss and trigger climate change mitigation effects of this bioeconomy subsector in the upcoming decades.

The transformation towards a low-carbon bioeconomy until 2050 is one of the main strategic long-term targets of the European Union. This work presents transformation scenarios for the case of Austria with GHG reduction to about 20% of Kyoto baseline. The scenarios are developed with an optimization model integrating the energy sector, land use and biomass flows. Focus is on investigating possible developments in domestic biomass supply and use. Biomass is crucial for (largely) decarbonising the energy system and replacing fossil-based and energyintensive materials. Domestic biomass use (dry mass) increases by 32% in an 'intensive' and 11% in an 'alternative' transformation scenario, while total energy consumption decreases by 40%. Transformation to a low-carbon bioeconomy could be accomplished without additional biomass imports. Keywords: Low-carbon economy, Bioeconomy, Scenario, Decarbonisation, Biomass

The final publication is available via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.01.030 ., In this work a method for integrated strategic heating and cooling planning applicable for any city or region is presented and applied for the case study city of Brasov. The overall methodology comprises the calculation of the cost-optimal combination of heat savings with either district heating or individual supply technologies for different building groups located in different areas according to the availability of a current district heating network. This optimal combination is calculated for different scenarios and framework conditions, and different indicators like total system costs, total CO2 emissions, share of renewables etc. are calculated and compared to analyse the economic efficiency as well as the CO2 reduction potentials of various options to save heat and supply heat in the buildings. The results of the assessment show that in the assessed case study city heat savings of 58-78% are cheaper than all assessed heat supply options for the different building groups but that renewable supply options are not the most economical alternatives per se under stated conditions. The presented integrated planning process reveals that long term planning is essential to reach decarbonisation goals and that current framework conditions should be adapted to generate more favourable conditions for renewable heating systems.

The paper investigates the European space heating (SH) and domestic hot water (DHW) market in order to close knowledge gaps concerning its size. The stimulus for this research arises from incongruences found in SH and DHW market’s data in spite of over two decades of scientific research. The given investigation has been carried out in the framework of the Hotmaps project (Horizon 2020—H2020), which aims at designing an open source toolbox to support urban planners, energy agencies, and public authorities in heating and cooling (H&C) planning on country, regional, and local levels. Our research collects and analyzes SH and DHW market data in the European Union (EU), specifically the amount of operative units, installed capacities, energy efficiency coefficients as well as equivalent full-load hours per equipment type and country, with a bottom-up approach. The analysis indicates that SH and DHW account for a significant portion of the total EU energy utilization (more than 20%), amounting to almost 3900 TWh/y. At the same time, the energy consumption provided by district heating (DH) systems exceeds the one of condensing boilers. While DH systems applications are growing throughout the EU, the replacement of elderly, conventional boilers progresses at a slower pace.

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.