ENTRAIN – Enhancing renewable heat planning for improving the air quality of communities

ENTRAIN main objective is to promote structural cooperation between public authorities and key stakeholders at transnational level and to build-up skills and know-how for a systematic, holistic and efficient planning of small DH systems within 5 target regions (IT, DE, HR, SI, PL), based on renewable heat sources, i.e. solar, biomass, waste heat, heat pumps and geothermal.

5 Regional Stakeholders Advisory Groups involving 11 partners, 24 associated partners and local actors will be set up and will be responsible for developing 5 initial surveys and 5 local action plans. Implementation of these action plans will lead to a CO2 emission reduction, an improvement of local air quality and to socio-economic benefits for local communities through the growths of technical expertise, the start-up of investments and innovative financial tools.

Heat planning guidelines and quality criteria will be made available, based on knowledge transfer from regions with advanced planning capacities and long-term experience in renewable DH (AT, DE), also through an ambitious capacity building programme with 25 training session. ENTRAIN will trigger the initiation of 9 pilot local DH networks and 9 heat planning studies, along with the development of 3 innovative local and regional financing schemes and the adaptation and adoption of the existing Austrian quality management system qm heizwerke in at least 3 of the target regions.