The Energy Mosaic Austria—A Nationwide Energy and Greenhouse Gas Inventory on Municipal Level as Action Field of Integrated Spatial and Energy Planning

Abstract

While climate agreements are made on an international level, the measures for mitigating climate change must be executed on a local scale. Designing energy and climate related strategies on the level of municipalities has been hampered by the lack of comprehensive data on the current status of energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions on the local level. A novel approach based on the so-called spatial turn in energy and climate policies has now been established in the form of the Energy Mosaic Austria, which represents a comprehensive energy and greenhouse gas inventory for all Austrian municipalities considering different purposes of energy consumption and different energy sources. The inventory is based on the linkage of bottom-up and top-down operations, utilizing data on land use and mobility structures on the municipal level. The outcomes provide a detailed insight into the pattern of energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions that are resolved on the municipal level. A spatially differentiated analysis of the inventory yields dependencies of the energy consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions on spatial structures particularly due to the fractions of different types of land use including mobility. With the energy mosaic Austria, local policy makers are given an inventory with unprecedented spatial and contentual resolution, which is fully coherent with more coarse-grained provincial and nationwide compilations of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and elucidates the scope of action in energy and climate policy from the municipal to the nationwide level.

Exergy as Criteria for Efficient Energy Systems—A Spatially Resolved Comparison of the Current Exergy Consumption, the Current Useful Exergy Demand and Renewable Exergy Potential

“…A spatially resolved holistic view of the Austrian energy system has only been published in the recent work of Abart-Heriszt et al [5]. The spatially resolved energy consumption in their work was based on very similar approaches and data sources as this work.…”

“…Abart-Heriszt et al [5] analyzed the different types of land use for the municipalities' energy consumptions and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, they calculated spatially resolved greenhouse gas emissions.…”

“…As seen in other publications, they distinguished top-down and bottom-up approaches that are both used in combination with Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Abart-Heriszt et al [5] linked bottom-up and top-down methods to perform a spatially differentiated analysis of final energy consumption patterns and associated greenhouse gas emissions on a municipal level in Austria. Ramachandra and Shruti [63] also applied top-down and bottom-up techniques for the spatial mapping of renewable energy potentials in Karnataka, India.…”

“…The factor for the spatial segmentation is specific for each type of waste (Tables 7 and 8). [151], the total corn acreage of 2026 km 2 [139] and a fruit-straw-ratio of 1 [144], 5 calculated with a mean yield of 280 t rapeseed per km 2 [151], the total rapeseed acreage of 540 km 2 [139] and a mean fruit-straw-ratio of 2.8 [144], 6 calculated with a mean yield of 7320 t sugar beet per km 2 [151], the total sugar beet acreage of 448 km 2 [139] and a mean fruit-straw-ratio of 1.7 [144]. [156] as well as with the lower heating value of the biogas of 6.4 kWh/Nm 3 [157], 3 calculated with the amount of excrement per animal and year as well as the specific gas yield.…”

“…For Austria, there are only two spatially resolved energy consumption studies available at this point (Section 3.2): one focused on only the industrial sector (including transport and conversion losses) [4] and the other one took the final energy consumption of all sectors into account, but neglected the transport and conversion losses [5]. None of these two Austria-relevant studies were exergy based.…”