Disclosing the heat density of district heating in Austria in 2050 under the remaining European CO2 budget of the 1.5 °C climate target

The core objective of this work is to downscale the cost-effective heat supply of different European decarbonization scenarios generated by the aggregate model GENeSYS-MOD from the national to the community level in Austria and thus disclose the heat density of district heating in 2050. We assume that district heating encompasses geothermal, synthetic gas, hydrogen, waste, and large-scale heat pumps as renewable heat sources. The results determine district heating in 68 Austrian communities in Austria in 2050, which corresponds to 6% of the total number of communities. We find that GENeSYS-MOD results are capable in covering local trends in district heating since high shares of the projected heat densities at the local levels achieve values indicating economic viability. Further research should follow on how locally determined district heating and heat densities could be returned into more aggregate models, such as GENeSYS-MOD, in the sense of a feedback loop. That allows refining assumptions in the large-scale upper-level models, which in turn will increase the plausibility and realism of pathways at the European level.