Empowering Municipalities for a Sustainable Future: Insights from the Act!onheat project on effective Heating & Cooling planning

The planning of municipalities plays a crucial role in shaping sustainable living conditions for the future, with heating and cooling (H&C) accounting for approximately half of Europe’s total energy demand. Currently, around 75% of this demand relies on fossil fuels, making the transition to climate neutrality by 2050 particularly urgent. Strategic H&C planning has emerged as a key tool for local decarbonization efforts, with Denmark serving as a pioneer in this area through the expansion of district heating since the 1973 oil crisis. This approach has since spread across Europe, driven by initiatives like the revised Energy Efficiency Directive (EU/2023/1791) (EED), which mandates H&C planning for municipalities with over 45,000 inhabitants by October 2025. Despite its growing adoption, many European countries still face significant challenges in implementing effective H&C plans. The Act!onHeat project sought to identify success factors for strong H&C planning through a comprehensive analysis involving surveys, interviews, and meta-studies of planning documents. Key findings indicate that commitment from decision-makers, effective communication, coordination within existing municipal structures, and robust data availability are essential for successful H&C planning. Moreover, the development of a structured workflow for H&C planning was proposed, consisting of eleven steps that guide municipalities from vision development to project implementation. Act!onHeat also provided tailored support to municipalities, including training modules and financial pre-feasibility studies. Over the project's lifetime from June 2021 to November 2024, 30 applicants from energy agencies and municipal administrations worked intensively with us, resulting in benefits for more than 200 municipalities across 14 countries in Europe.