Step Up Smart Cities

Energy Mapping can take many forms. The four STEP UP partner cities have all taken different innovative approaches to using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to inform their energy planning at a strategic level. The four STEP UP partner cities' approaches are summarised below.

Energy Strategy Mapping – Gothenburg

By structuring energy issues of your energy strategy thematically and spatially, a matrix approach can help to improve your analysis and facilitates discussions about problems, possible solutions and their effects.

The STEP UP team in Gothenburg is trying out a model for Energy Strategy Mapping: a matrix approach which has previously been used for social impact assessments will now be tested for energy planning on different city scales.

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Heat Demand Mapping for Multiple Objectives- Glasgow

What is quite often understood by Energy Mapping is mapping of electricity and gas consumption. Determining energy demand geographically allows for optimisation with a city’s energy supply and new urban developments and more.

Glasgow’s STEP UP partner Scottish Power Energy Networks has mapped the energy consumption of Glasgow’s buildings using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The GIS layers make it not only possible to spatially analyse and visualise current and projected electricity and gas demand, but allows for many more applications. By combining these new map layers with other layers such as spatial representation of areas of deprivation using data from economic and social indices,  GIS can be a powerful tool used to combat fuel poverty.

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Heat Consumption Mapping for Multi-Apartment Buildings – Riga

Rigorous energy consumption mapping of your city’s buildings combined with an assessment of the state of the buildings allows for an estimation of the potential energy savings.

The majority of Riga’s citizens live in multi-apartment buildings which are served by a district heating network for space heating and domestic hot water. In the framework of the Urb.Energy project the energy consumption of these buildings in the district of Jugla was thoroughly assessed

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Energy Consumption Reduction Measures - Awareness Raising - Ghent

Energy efficiency in the residential sector is high on the agenda in many Flemish cities. A particular feature of Flemish cities is the typical single family dwelling. A feature which constitutes a challenge for energy efficiency measures as it requires the buy-in of every single family in order to realise the common objectives set by cities.

Ghent aims at doubling the retrofitting rate and has chosen a particular district to test approaches where top-down objectives meet bottom-up actions. With the cooperation of STEP UP partners EANDIS and VITO, the city has mapped the energy consumption and effects of sustainable energy solutions of the residential sector in the district Dampoort-Sint-Amandsberg. The findings were visualised and presented to residents of the district in an interactive workshop.

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Heat Mapping

Heat mapping can be an extremely useful tool in understanding energy usage in a city. Heating and cooling makes up nearly half of all the energy that cities use. Heat mapping is a method of assessing energy demand in a city, with layers of analysis allowing for informed decision making when planning energy use and infrastructure investment.

Find out more here

Waste Heat Mapping – Belgium

“The most sustainable energy is the energy not used.” While this is true for all the energy mapping applications above, thermographic imaging clearly shows where heat is wasted. Mounted on an aircraft, a thermographic camera can highlight badly insulated roofs and attics.

In Belgium many cities have used this powerful tool to raise awareness and get citizens to take action.

Read more here

To find out more about the cities’ approaches to energy flow analysis and the key findings, download the report summary here or get in touch on info@stepupsmartcities.eu

Further resources

During the project, the STEP UP cities have also been running training sessions for its learning network, sharing knowledge, expertise and lessons learned with other cities. These sessions have been developed specific to the needs of local networks on key topics of interest. Training sessions relevant to energy mapping include:

Heat from wastewater – Training session for Belgian cities (Ghent)

This comprehensive workshop covered the theme of energy or heat from wastewater, incorporating presentations on a range of relevant topics including energy from wastewater case studies and mapping, energy demand mapping and dynamic energy atlases for cities and regions. To find out more and download presentations from the day, click here

Energy planning with a city development focus - STEP UP seminar at SPECIAL (Gothenburg)

This interactive seminar and workshop from the Gothenburg STEP UP team took a focus on how energy planning can be effectively integrated with wider city planning, exploring the use of the Energy Matrix in practice (see above). To find out more about the training session and view materials from the day, click here

To explore other training resources developed through STEP UP, visit our Training page