Guidelines on community-led heating and cooling

Heating represents around half of the final energy consumption in Europe. Thus, it is now the time for energy communities and other citizen-led projects offering heating and cooling services to showcase their potential in helping us achieve our climate targets in time. Citizen-owned district heating and cooling are often among the cheapest and most durable solutions, as they do not have a for-profit structure, and can therefore focus on social and environmental benefits such as thermal well-being.

These interactive guidelines aim to give an introduction into the world of renewable citizen-led heating and cooling, including an explanation of what they are, how they function, and give advice on how to replicate successful examples. You can browse them by clicking on the four boxes below, which will give you access to the different modules of the guidelines.

• Introduction. A brief introduction to community-led heating and cooling and why you should choose an energy community for heating and cooling.
• Supportive framework. Indications of what you should look at in your country’s legislation when you start planning your project.
• Heating and cooling technologies. There is no one technology that can serve every energy communities’ needs. Here you can find an overview of technologies you can choose from to better fit your local needs.
• Start your project. Here you can find all the steps you need to go through to develop your community-led heating and cooling project.

For the development of these guidelines, REScoop.eu, the European federation of energy communities, and Energie Samen, the Dutch federation of energy cooperatives, collaborated on the research for the development of these guidelines. This work is now being continued by REScoop.eu.

We hope that these guidelines will help you in the journey to democratise your local thermal energy systems, and continue growing a bottom-up, citizen-led energy transition in the European Union.