Heat Atlas to be updated

The Heat Atlas used in Heat Plan Denmark 2008 is being developed further as part of the 4DH Centre’s work. The original Heat Atlas was based on data from the Danish BBR register as well as heat plan zoning dating back to its origins in the early 1980s. However, by 2008, this data had been neglected for some time, due to the shift from thorough spatial heat planning to a case-by-case project approach, further influenced by savings and structural changes in the public sector. This has had a negative effect on all aspects of energy planning.

Since then, an increased focus on energy savings and the need to identify CO₂ reductions has renewed the interest in publicly available heat atlases, which describe heat demand and saving potentials and costs, as well as an alternative heat supply and its costs. The new heat atlas will assume rigorous heat savings in the Danish building mass, and calculate the costs and potentials for the extension and establishment of district heating, as well as the more extensive use of renewable energy sources in the heating system, combined with low temperature district heating. Emphasis will be on the costs of heat generation as well as the losses in the grid.

The combination of an updated BBR register, new heat planning data and possibly utility data in a new version of the Heat Atlas may be used to document how the further use of RES, energy efficiency in buildings, and low temperature district energy may result in district energy that is far more feasible than assumed in current governmental assessments.