The heating sector, Europe-wide and in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR), has huge impact on climate change as it accounts for a large share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One lever to positively steer the developments in this area is “local heat planning (LHP)”, an instrument to depict sustainable and economically viable transformation paths and measures towards a GHG-neutral heat supply at municipal level. The EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) recast 2023 now includes a new provision, which requires Member States to ensure that municipalities above 45,000 inhabitants prepare local heat plans that respond to increased EU obligations in the upcoming years. However, many BSR municipalities are not prepared for this extensive task, they lack know-how and resources for LHP as well as the awareness for their long-term responsibilities in decarbonising their local heat sector.
PlanHeat addresses this challenge by bringing together municipalities and expert organisations from seven BSR countries that jointly develop a transnational manual on how to prepare local heat plans. This guiding manual comprises five sub-solutions on the topics data access, technologies, staff and skills, stakeholder participation as well as financial and organizational solutions for LHP. Relevant target groups like heat suppliers, energy consultants or ministries responsible for energy and climate policies will be strongly engaged in the project. The PlanHeat manual will be disseminated all over the BSR.
LEI activities in the project
LEI will lead WP2 Piloting & Evaluating solutions. In WP2, LEI will conduct pilot activities on all sub-solutions together with its tandem partner Alytus City Municipality, and thus will actively participate in all 5 GoAs (GoA2.1 – GoA2.5). Furthermore, LEI will exchange on and partly supervise pilot activities in the other partner countries.
In WP3, LEI will be the Lithuanian contact point for the Baltic municipal heating network (GoA 3.4). LEI will organize 1 transnational partner meeting (GoA 3.5) and 1 national information event (GoA 3.2) and will organize, in cooperation with Alytus City Municipality, workshops and meetings to disseminate the project results and training material among Ambassador Cities and other Lithuanian municipalities (GoA 3.1 & GoA 3.3).
Keywords: Local heat planning, district heating and cooling, energy efficiency.
Acronym: PlanHeat
Call / Instrument: Interreg Baltic Sea Region 2021-2027 programme, priority „3 Climate-neutral societies“, objective „3.2 Energy transition“
Project budget: 3,610,000.00 EUR in total, of which 199,292.00 EUR EUR allocated to LEI
Coordinator: Magistrat der Stadt Bremerhaven, Germany.
Partners:
- ECOLOG Institute for Social-Ecological Research and Education, Germany
- City of Bydgoszcz, Poland
- Narodowa Agencja Poszanowania Energii S.A., Poland
- Stowarzyszenie Gmin Polska Sieć „Energie Cités”, Poland
- Alytaus miesto savivaldybė, Lithuania
- Lietuvos energetikos institutas, Lithuania
- Smiltenes novada pašvaldība, Latvia
- SIA Ekodoma, Latvia
- AS Rakvere Soojus, Estonia
- Tallinna Tehnikaülikool, Estonia
- Ekokumppanit Oy, Finland
- Energikontor Syd AB, Sweden
- City of Konin, Poland
The Project is funded by the European Union’s Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2021-2027.
Project Team
| Name, surname | Office | phone. | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
LEI Representative |
|||
| Rimantas Bakas | 114-AK | +37037401930 | Rimantas.Bakas@lei.lt |
|
Project Team |
|||
| Eugenija Farida Dzenajavičienė | 207-LK | +37037401935 | Farida.Dzenajaviciene@lei.lt |
| Paulius Vilkinis | 212-LK | +37037401852 | Paulius.Vilkinis@lei.lt |
| Inga Briliūtė | 207/1-LK | +37037401841 | Inga.Briliute@lei.lt |