Quantification of overlapping heating and cooling demand for the feasibility assessment of bi-directional systems over Europe

With warmer climate conditions, the growing need to cool down building environment in Europe calls for efficient solutions to solve the heating and cooling demand altogether. To meet such requirement, the bidirectional fifth generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) system has been proposed in recent years, while having the capability of integrating the renewable and waste energy sources. The overlapping heating and cooling demand, or referred to as the simultaneous demand, is proved as the key pre-requisite to guide the application of 5GDHC through several case studies. However, how large is this overlapping part in the practical building stock and where are the feasible areas for 5GDHC remain unclear. To close the gap, this study assesses the quantities and geographical distributions of overlapping heating and cooling demand across Europe in EU 27, UK, and EFTA countries. Using GIS-based methods and data sources, the study region is split into 28 million hectare-sized units where the overlapping demand is specifically calculated. Moreover, the possible future changes to the heating and cooling demand alone brought by warmer climate, building renovations, and increased cooling area were investigated. The results from reference condition at year 2016 reveal that less than 0.1% of the building stock has DOC larger than 0.3, which is the threshold for 5GDHC being energy efficient. These potential areas are primarily found in city centres involving cooling demands from commercial and industrial processes. In the future scenarios of year 2050, while a better energy performance of buildings and warmer climate may decrease the heating and increase the cooling demand, the overlapping part is only slightly increased by around 5%. Accordingly, around 2500 ha-sized units from the entire study region are found to meet the DOC limit required by the 5GDHC while having large enough demand density to support district energy systems. The presented works geographically identified the potential areas for 5GDHC and can be extended with regional details to serve as the connection between top-level planning and bottom-level case studies.

Automated summary

With the increasing need for cooling building environments in Europe due to warmer climate conditions, efficient solutions are required to meet heating and cooling demands. The bidirectional fifth generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) system has been proposed, integrating renewable and waste energy sources. However, the extent and suitable areas for implementing 5GDHC remain unclear.