What do cities need to decarbonise heat? The essentials for an effective detox.

Roughly 75% of the heating system in Europe is supplied by fossil fuels, considerably harming wellbeing in cities.  From polluted air causing health diseases to dependence on foreign suppliers threatening energy security and resulting in volatile prices, fossil fuels may bring warmth, but not without negative consequences.  

This is why municipalities are working hard to decarbonise their heating systems, even if they often struggle with hostile conditions. Inadequate national contexts can frequently present challenges for cities and towns wishing to undertake a full-city detox. According to an EU tracker evaluating national frameworks for local heat decarbonisation, only two Member States – the Netherlands and Denmark – are providing cities with the appropriate support, including financial, technical and staffing resources. 

^{The four countries are The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Lithuania. Source: EU Tracker.} 

If cities and towns are to decarbonise heat, allowing for the massive decrease of CO2 emissions needed to reach net-zero by 2050, some conditions must be met. Much like a full-body detox, a healthy drink alone is not enough; you also need physical wellbeing, mental clarity, and a positive environment. Let’s go over the different conditions cities have identified as essential for a successful heat detox. 

1. Intellectual Wellbeing: Access to Data

Heat mapping and planning is an essential step in a city’s journey towards healthy heat, but it is also a demanding task. Even with the right framework set by Member States in terms of legal, financial and human resources support, municipalities can still struggle to develop a comprehensive heating and cooling plan if they don’t have the appropriate data.

Guimarães (Portugal) saw the private sector as the solution for this problem, and launched a Climate City Pact to bring it on board. With this partnership, Guimarães can collect important energy-related data from the private sector. In Munich (Germany), data was also fundamental in developing a comprehensive heat plan, and the cooperation with utilities and energy providers was key in the process. 

One key element [of the heat plan] is to have a detailed and consistent database for all subsequent planning activities and energy counselling activities, and to allow informed advice for the general public on future heating systems suitable in their area.  - Tilmann Rave, Head of heat planning in the Department of Energy and Climate of the city of Munich. 

2. Physical Wellbeing: Municipal Resources

It should come as no surprise that long-term projects such as heating and cooling plans, which can take up to a year to plan, and five to ten years to implement, need to be paired with skilled staff and long-term financial support. A 2022 study, LocalStaff4Climate, revealed that European municipalities are significantly understaffed to fulfil the diverse range of roles required for building decarbonisation. These roles include energy analysts, project managers, urban developers, engineers, experts in citizen and stakeholder engagement, energy advisers, communication specialists, public building professionals, and social housing experts. 

^{Source: LocalStaff4Climate Study}

Beyond insufficient capacities, many municipalities also bring awareness to the insufficient funds available for their heat transitions. In Budapest (Hungary), the difficult access to European funds and loans is hampering the city’s ambition to replace fossil fuels with clean and local sources of heat, like geothermal and excess heat. And if we take Heidelberg’s (Germany) example, the city estimates a cost of 825 million euros to finance the heat transition, while the German Federal Government is only offering 500 million euros in support of this process. 

The main challenge is, of course, that it's a very short time period [to decarbonise heat] and we have to be realistic.  It’s not clear if we'll get enough employees, if we’ll get enough of money. - Eckart Würzner, Mayor of the city of Heidelberg

3. Environmental Wellbeing: Legal Frameworks

Resources aside, municipalities also simply need the right laws and obligations to implement necessary measures. A favourable legal framework can include:

• Legal possibilities to enforce energy zoning and heat planning, like an obligation to connect to district heating.  
• Restriction or bans on fossil fuel boilers, and supportive legislation to reduce gas demand.
• Removal of obligations to connect buildings to gas networks.
• Removal of legal barriers to exploit local heat potentials. 

The biggest challenge is for us is that we need a legal framework on the federal level, it’s very important for us. - Stephan Auer-Stüger, Councillor at the City of Vienna. 

4. Spiritual Wellbeing:  Clarity on Technologies

Each city has its own ideal detox mix, filled with local and sustainable sources of heat to replace fossil fuels. But to find which healthy sources are available, and to harness the potential of such sources, cities need technology.  

For many cities, innovative technological projects are at the very heart of the heat detox plan: Prague (Czechia) seeks to use geothermal energy from underground, as the new metro line is being constructed, while Marseille (France) is using the water of the Mediterranean Sea to cool down and warm up its buildings.

To incentivise local deployment of new technologies, it’s essential to provide clarity about heating systems, timelines and differentiation in subsidies, which would help establish investment security for business owners and utilities. 

5. Financial Wellbeing: Incentives & Subsidies

Making district heating attractive and competitive becomes a significant challenge under adverse market conditions. If gas is heavily subsidised, or if its price goes down – as is starting to happen after the 2022 energy crisis -, it becomes difficult to convince people of the need to replace it. This has been a challenge for cities in Croatia, where citizens don’t feel any real incentive to decouple from gas, due to the high investment costs and minimal savings that such a transition would entail in the current context of subsidised gas.

At the same time, as cities seek to fight against energy poverty, they must make sure that the environmentally conscious solutions proposed are affordable to all.

A second one [condition to succeed] is, of course the price in general. Now gas is cheap and electricity is expensive, it should be the other way around. - Tine Heyse, Deputy Mayor for Climate, Environment and Housing, of the city of Ghent

Municipalities should therefore be able to introduce economic incentives, such as subsidies to cushion investment costs (redirecting the existing subsidies on fossil fuels), and be supported financially when exploiting local heat potential. Likewise, it’s important to consider heat system exchange alongside building renovation efforts, to streamline incentives and optimise actions. 

6. Social Wellbeing: Cooperative Local Ecosystem

Finally, every successful heat detox needs this fundamental condition: cooperation with all relevant stakeholders. For such a big endeavour as heat decarbonisation, involving many different actors, everyone must be working together in the same direction. Cooperation with energy providers, district heating operators, knowledge institutions are crucial to make a detox successful, as well as engaging citizens to bring inhabitants onboard.  

First and foremost, it’s essential to have a productive relationship with the district heating operators, especially if it’s not owned by the city. In Valladolid (Spain) for instance, the municipal collaboration with Somacyl, a regional public operator, has been crucial in the expansion of the city’s heat network. Likewise, it’s important to stimulate the local distribution system operators (DSOs) to plan for the future of the energy grid and making it future-proof:  DSOs should be ready to switch from gas supply to district heating & cooling networks.

Finally, a city’s detox will remain incomplete without citizen buy-in, a widespread shift away from individual gas boilers, and increased connections to the district heating network. In Eastern Europe especially, lack of public trust in the district heating networks has led to many people opting for individual gas heating solutions, making city-wide efforts to decarbonise heat more challenging.  

This is why cities are investing in campaigns to raise awareness about the benefits of district heating and clean heat, and trying to get the private sector involved in the journey towards decarbonisation. Cooperation and mutual trust are key in this process, as Brest (France) learned since beginning its detox: 

What we learned is mainly, I would say, to involve all the stakeholders. And together with everyone do some awareness campaign also to explain very well how we need to decarbonise the heating system. - Glen Dissaux, Vice-President of Brest Metropole, in charge of the Climate Plan. 

With all these conditions met, cities and towns are bound to succeed in creating healthier and sustainable heating systems. Join us in this journey towards healthy heat for cities by subscribing to the Cities Heat Detox campaign!

If your city is struggling to overcome these challenges, make sure to explore our CoM-munity Stories map, filled with inspiring detox cases from all over Europe, and take a look at our Heat Detox Kit, a compilation of helpful resources to boost your decarbonisation journey.