The heating and cooling sector in Europe significantly contributes to CO2 emissions, air pollution and energy insecurity, primarily because over 70% of buildings’ heat today relies on fossil fuels. This dependency undermines public health and energy independence, while hindering climate goals. Cities and towns have the potential to massively shift to cleaner and sustainable heating, to reduce emissions, protect their city’s air quality and ensure more stable energy prices for citizens. 

To shed the light on cities’ potential and actions, the Covenant of Mayors has launched the Cities Heat Detox campaign – gathering cities and towns of all sizes committed to detoxing their cities’ heat, opting for a healthier and more secure future for all. The campaign inspires and empowers cities to decarbonise their heat in three essential steps.

Step 1: Understanding Your Heating System

The first step in detoxing is gaining clarity on heat sources, demand, and alternatives within your city. By conducting thorough mapping and planning, cities can identify opportunities to decarbonise heat sources, reduce demand, and develop collective district heating (DHC) networks. The EU’s new Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) requires Member States to ensure that municipalities with over 45 000 inhabitants prepare local heating and cooling plans.

Our member city, Munich exemplifies effective heat planning, using detailed databases to map existing networks and potential sources. The city made its heat map public, fostering trust among residents and energy providers while encouraging stakeholder input for ongoing improvement.

“A detailed database is crucial for planning and public energy counselling, fostering cooperation with utilities and energy providers.” – Dr. Tilmann Rave, Head of Heat Planning of the city of Munich.

Step 2: Full-city detox

For a significant impact, cities should embrace collective district heating solutions. Expanding DHC in urban areas is a cost-effective way to utilise low-carbon energy, enhance air quality, and ensure energy security.

Cities of all sizes can lead in DHC, whether they are large or small or have a certain level of experience. Brest is ready to expand its already 55-kilometre-long district heating system and create new ones, while Leuven, new to DHC, is integrating it into its heat strategy.

“District heating is essential for replacing fossil fuels in Belgium, even though this is a relatively new approach for us, and we are still learning.” – Mohamed Ridouani, Mayor of Leuven.

Step 3: Clean sources of heat

As a last step, cities must transform their heating by integrating clean energy sources suitable for the area . Options include geothermal, solar heat, heat recovered from industry or other sources, and large-scale heat pumps.

Cities have various strategies for detoxifying their heating. For example, Marseille is planning to use innovative seawater technology alongside excess heat from data centres, sewage treatment, biomass, and solar thermal energy.

To find out more, take a look at the Covenant of Mayors’ Heat Detox Map and get inspired by other cities that are detoxifying their heat.

Join the campaign to share your city’s heat detox journey and unique strategy! You can contribute to the campaign by submitting your story, echoing the campaign on your channels, finding inspiration and participating in events and workshops. 

Are you implementing a project to decarbonise heating and cooling in your city? Apply to the Covenant Award

This year’s edition of the EU Covenant of Mayors Award highlights projects aimed at achieving cleaner and more sustainable heating and cooling solutions. 

The award will reward achievements of cities efforts towards their city’s heat detox, regardless of size, encouraging participation from Covenant signatories across Europe. The judging criteria focus on contributions to decarbonisation goals, stakeholder engagement, and the broader benefits of healthy environment, energy sovereignty, economic efficiency and job creation. 

Those who don’t win but have compelling stories, will still get featured on our map. Applying thus offers great exposure for your city’s efforts, as all applications will feed the campaign and the EU Covenant’s channels. Find out more and apply here!