The Stratego project (July 2014 – July 2016), worked across 12 European countries, including Scotland, aiming to aid the development of effective heating and cooling plans and build capacities to deliver district heating on the ground.
The project was funded by Intelligent Energy Europe and the Scottish Government. Visit the Europe-wide Stratego website.
Project activities in Scotland
Scotland aims to decarbonise its heating by 2050 and district heating is seen as a crucial technology to enable this to happen. The Scottish Government Heat Policy Statement, published in June 2015, set an ambition for “1.5TWh of heat delivered by district heating by 2020 to both domestic and non-domestic properties.”
To make this a reality, action is needed at both the national and local level.
The Stratego project worked with local authorities to offer coaching and support for their work on district heating delivery on the ground. Alongside this research and planning at the national level was undertaken to ensure that local and national plans align to deliver the best district heating solutions for Scotland.
The project activities included:
Informing local and national heating and cooling plans
Academic experts from around Europe collaborated to create a Pan-European Thermal Atlas, that can be used to inform project prioritisation at the local level as well as planning at the national level.
Based upon this thermal atlas, ‘example’ National Heating and Cooling Plans were produced for five project partner countries: Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom. These plans quantified the impacts of implementing various energy efficiency measures in the heating and cooling sectors. Read the report for the UK.
Creating multi-level dialogue
The project worked to facilitate and enhance dialogue between national and local authorities within partner countries. In the context of Scotland, we worked closely with the Scottish Heat Network Partnership, and the Scottish Government to ensure our activities enhanced and contributed to wider national initiatives.
Building local capacity for delivery of district heating in Scotland
The project involved a number of activities to support local authorities in their facilitation and development of district heating projects.
- BRE UK provided one-to-one support in developing their local plans and project business cases.
- 3 coaching sessions led in partnership with the Danish District Heating Association where local authority officers were able to learn from experiences in Denmark as well as through peer learning with other local authorities in Scotland.
Sharing best practice internationally
Experiences from across the European partners were compiled over the duration of the project, particularly on uses of heat maps, capacity building and application of business models during project delivery.
Who was involved?
Stratego worked with Scotland’s 7 cities through the Scottish Cities Alliance: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth and Stirling. The project forms part of the work of the Heat Network Partnership, which brings together Scottish Government funded programmes across a number of agencies to provide a coordinated programme of support for heat network projects (more information at www.districtheatingscotland.com).
At the EU level, the project was a collaboration with 16 partners across 12 European countries: Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Poland and the UK. STRATEGO supported 23 cities/regions in 9 target countries, including the UK, to map their local heating and cooling demand and supply and to define areas of priority for intervention.
Relevant Links:
Stratego
