Spatial assessment of cooling demand and district cooling potential utilizing public data

Europe's building sector represents its largest single energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters. Although space heating and the preparation of domestic hot water are responsible for the largest share of their energy demand, cooling is becoming an important factor with the rise of the global temperatures and the increased living standards across the continent. The decarbonisation of the cooling sector is a challenge especially relevant in densely populated urban areas and as with heating, district cooling is proving to be an effective solution for the supply of the needed energy densities in these conditions. However, unlike district heating, the assessment of the potential for the utilization of district cooling is not well addressed and researched. The research in this paper proposes a flexible method for the assessment of the spatial distribution of cooling demand and the assessment of the viability for the utilization of district cooling using mostly public data combining a bottom-up and top-down mapping approach. The method has been implemented on the case study of Croatia (top-down) and the City of Zagreb (bottom-up) and it demonstrated a high potential for the utilization of district cooling in both cases.