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The planning of heating and cooling supply and demand is key to reaching climate and sustainability targets. At the same time, data for planning are scarce for many places in Europe. In this study, we developed an open source dataset of gross floor area and energy demand for space heating and hot water in residential and tertiary buildings at the hectare level for EU28 + Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland. This methodology is based on a top-down approach, starting from a consistent dataset at the country level (NUTS 0), breaking this down to the NUTS 3 level and further to the hectare level by means of a series of regional indicators. We compare this dataset with data from other sources for 20 places in Europe. This process shows that the data for some places fit well, while for others, large differences up to 45% occur. The discussion of these results shows that the other data sources used for this comparison are also subject to considerable uncertainties. A comparison of the developed data with maps based on municipal building stock data for three cities shows that the developed dataset systematically overestimates the gross floor area and heat demand in low density areas and vice versa. We conclude that these data are useful for strategic purposes on aggregated level of larger regions and municipalities. It is especially valuable in locations where no detailed data is available. For detailed planning of heating and cooling infrastructure, local data should be used instead. We believe our work contributes towards a transparent, open source dataset for heating and cooling planning that can be regularly updated and is easily accessible and usable for further research and planning activities.

COP21 led to an agreed target of keeping the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. Due to its high potential for decarbonisation, the building stock will have to contribute a reduction of at least 85-95% in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions until 2050. Policy-driven scenario analysis is, therefore, important for assisting policy makers who are called upon to develop a corresponding framework to achieve those targets. The research questions of this paper are (1) Do long-term scenarios (in particular those labelled as ambitious) of energy demand in buildings reflect the COP21 target? (2) If not: What are reasons for the gap in terms of scenario assumptions, in particular, regarding the policy framework in the corresponding scenarios? The method builds on following steps: (1) analysis of GHG-emission reduction in scenarios from the policy-driven, bottom-up model Invert/EE-Lab; (2) compare scenarios among each other and analyse if they are in line with Paris targets; (3) discuss possible explanations for any gaps and the implications on future modelling work and policy making. Results show that scenarios labelled as being Bambitious^for several EU MSs achieve GHGemission reductions of 56-96% until 2050. However, just 27% of these ambitious scenarios achieve reductions above 85%. The reason is that policies for most of the modelled scenarios were developed together with policy makers and stakeholders, who-for different reasons-were not willing to go beyond a certain stringency in the modelled instruments. In particular, this was the case for regulatory instruments, which show to be essential for achieving ambitious climate targets.

District heating in general is seen as an important technology to decarbonise the heating sector especially in urban areas and therefore important to reach the climate goals agreed on COP 21 meeting held in Paris. This case study is based on the city of Brasov facing severe challenges with their existing district heating system, like many other cities in Romania and Eastern Europe do. This work assesses the impact of different policies on the feasibility of district heating under these conditions and suggests favourable policy frameworks to ensure an economically and ecologically viable district heating system. The results show that with a mix of different policies district heating can be made attractive again in Eastern European Regions and contribute to a renewable heating sector.

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