PLANHEAT
Empowering public authorities in the development of sustainable plans for low carbon heating and cooling for cities
| Business | Time | Project Coordinator | Funding Scheme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transport & Infrastructure |
Start Date: 01/10/2016 End Date: 30/09/2019 |
RINA | H2020-EE-2016-RIA-IA |
Challenge
75% of the European citizens will live in urban areas in 2020 and that this share will increase to 84% by 2050. But nowadays public bodies still face the lack of appropriate easy-to-use tools to support them in the definition, simulation and evaluation of suitable strategies for sustainable heating and cooling of their cities.
Moreover, current solutions are not tailored to local conditions and current tools used by public authorities are often designed for energy experts, resulting in a non user-friendly interface.
PLANHEAT, funded by the European Union's H2020 Programme under grant agreement 723757, will therefore develop an open-access and free tool that:
- maps the potential of locally available low-carbon energy sources and the forecasted demand for heating and cooling
- defines and simulates alternative environmentally friendly scenarios
- understands the interactions of these new scenarios with the existing infrastructures and networks
- identifies potential for further extension and upgrades of district heating and cooling networks
- evaluates the benefits in terms of energetic, economic and environmental gains.
The tool has a modular structure and it is composed by three modules: Mapping, Planning and Simulation.
Approach
RINA is the project coordinator of PLANHEAT and it is responsible for the overall project strategy implementation, including project planning, performance and financial control, quality assurance, risk management and contingency planning, and administration of the Community financial contribution.
Moreover, RINA is responsible for the development of Planning module defining and evaluating the KPIs for assessing the project's impacts.
Finally, RINA will support the whole training activities and will create connection.between urban H&C plans developed by PLANHEAT and National Sustainable Energy Plans.
Conclusion
In conclusion, PLANHEAT will fully support local authorities towards the decarbonisation of their heating and cooling systems, resulting in a reduction of GHG emissions also thanks to a dedicated training plan.
The project aims at reaching 50 cities of small-medium size (average size: 150.000 inhabitants/ city) by its end.
In this way, PLANHEAT will improve the planning capacity of local authorities in developing district heating networks and in the realization of efficient (co)generation systems based on the use of available local resources (both RES and waste energy from urban and industrial contexts).
