Heat Roadmap Europe 4 will develop heat strategies and thermal atlases for 14 EU countries
The 4th Heat Roadmap Europe project, which is a comprehensive study of the heating and cooling sectors in the 14 largest EU countries, has been approved by the EU’s research programme Horizon 2020. The study, which is led by researchers from the 4DH centre at Aalborg University, Denmark, will begin in February 2016 and continue for 3 years.
During this period, the researchers and their partners at 19 other European universities, companies and organisations will map the heating and cooling demand in 14 countries, along with the potential sources of surplus and renewable heating and cooling that could be used to supply these demands. They will also calculate the cost of reducing the heating and cooling demands and analyse the whole energy system (electricity, heating, cooling, industry, and transport) to find synergies that can save money, energy, and carbon dioxide emissions.
“It is very exciting news and we are really looking forward to the continuation of the Heat Roadmap Europe work”, said David Connolly, who is coordinator of the project. “I expect the results from this project to be very useful in the short-term, since they will inform policymakers about how to cost-effectively decarbonize the energy system in Europe. This will ensure that large investments are made in the infrastructure which is not only required today, but will also be necessary in the decades to come”.
Heat Roadmap Europe 4 builds upon the previous work in Heat Roadmap Europe 1, 2 and 3, by for example, including the industrial sector in the calculations, which accounts for a third of the heating demand in the EU. Furthermore, the 14 countries to be studied account for over 85-90% of the heating and cooling demands in Europe, thus increasing the potential to influence the entire heating sector in the EU.
The overall project objective is to empower policymakers and investors to develop policies and invest in new markets that will decarbonise the heating sector of Europe over the next 30-40 years. Among other things, the goals of the project will be to improve energy policies at local, national, and EU level, specify how up to 3,000,000 GWh/year of fossil fuels can be saved in Europe, and to illustrate how the €3 trillion of investments required to implement these savings will reduce the net cost of heating and cooling in Europe.
Website: http://heatroadmap.eu/
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