Over the past five years, energy experts and city planners from across Europe have developed a tool to help accelerate the decarbonisation of local heating and cooling networks. This free, online tool – known as the ‘THERMOS energy planning software’ – enables local planners to create and optimise financially-sound, low-carbon heating and cooling solutions for any area (worldwide!).

The heating and cooling sector is responsible for about 50 percent of the EU’s final energy demand. The good news is that we already have the solutions we need to improve that statistic. In fact, research conducted by the Heat Roadmap Europe project has shown that the heating and cooling sector can be fully decarbonised using existing technologies. The problem? Modernising current networks and putting in place sustainable district heating and cooling is hampered by a lack of data and capacity, high up-front costs, as well as the complex, lengthy and resource-intensive planning processes associated with evaluating all possible network options.

This is where the THERMOS energy planning software tool comes in.

The tool allows planners to create energy efficient heating and cooling systems – and to optimise results within minutes. A three-year validation and optimisation process – involving a range of actors from across the world – proved that the software has drastically speeds up, simplifies, and improves planning processes.

The THERMOS software can quickly identify solutions for the expansion of an existing system, the planning of an entirely new system, or for assessing the performance of specific network (and non-network) solutions via direct comparison.

“At ICLEI Europe we are proud to have been part of the development phase of the THERMOS software, ensuring that it serves the needs of cities and their stakeholders. We are absolutely convinced that THERMOS is a game changer,” says Carsten Rothballer, Coordinator for Sustainable Resources & Climate Resilience at ICLEI Europe.

All interested planners and stakeholders can access extensive, free, online self-training and capacity building materials to make the software easy to use. A THERMOS Replication Guide, User Case Studies and Sustainable Adoption Roadmap are also available, and were shaped with energy planning practitioners and policy-makers in mind.

For further details on the software, its features and availability click here.

Access the THERMOS software, open-source code, and demo video here.