According to a recent report, the EU wastes 2,860 TWh of heat per year – this equates to wasting 11 billion barrels of oil and 650 billion cubic meters of natural gas! Just by capturing that wasted heat, the EU could save 67 billion EUR.

Heating and cooling (H&C) is also crucial to reaching local, national and European targets, including those outlined in Europe’s REPowerEU Plan and 2050 decarbonisation goals. These require cities to accelerate action in sustainable and strategic H&C planning and decision-making, in order to provide more affordable, secure, and sustainable energy to their communities.

The good news: a European-wide ‘Support Facility’ is available to all local energy planners to help accelerate this energy transition.

Not all municipalities are equally prepared for energy transition. To this end, the Act!onHeat Support Facility provides energy planners with know-how, resources, and experience. The Facility’s tools and assistance then helps municipalities to start, complete, or improve upon their district H&C planning. Selected municipalities gain exclusive access to Hotmaps and THERMOS tools, which are H&C planning softwares that help accelerate local energy transitions.

A new call for applications to make use of the Support Facility is now open! “Act!onHeat offers municipalities a free opportunity to gain initial experience with heating and cooling planning or to intensify ongoing work. For the current call for applications, we will focus on providing technical support and help municipalities develop, or deepen, relevant case studies,” explains Ali Aydemir, Act!onHeat’s Project Coordinator.

Since its launch last year, the Support Facility has advised municipalities from across Europe on how to begin, refine and finalise their district H&C planning. For example, Zelzate (Belgium) was supported with research on how to heat the highest number of connected buildings within the municipality’s budget. Meanwhile, the State Energy Agency of Hessen (Germany) invited its municipalities to participate in a workshop organised by Support Facility experts on how to develop local heating plans.

The Facility offers a wide range of services, including guidelines for tendering services for H&C planning, data analysis, and support developing specific case studies. New applicants will be selected based on their ambition, interest, and needs. Additionally, applicants are able to select between two different Support Facility modules in which to participate: ‘H&C transition strategy development’ or ‘Project Feasibility’.

Interested in how the Support Facility can benefit your local community? This Call for Applications will remain open until 31 July 2023. Click here to apply now via EUSurvey.