Climate and resource characteristics-based zoning of heat source retrofit for heating systems and implications for heat consumption of urban settlements in cold regions of China

Efforts to further lower China's heating consumption are highly desirable to achieve the goals of peak carbon by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. A two-tier zoning method for heat source retrofit based on coldness and resource abundance has been proposed in the cold regions of China and the relations between climate and resources have been explored. Besides, the heat index and heat consumption under different retrofitting zones of urban settlements have been assessed to reveal the impact of building energy efficiency on heat consumption. Results obtained are as follows: (1) Cold regions are divided into I-R0, I-R1, I-R2, I-R3, II-R1, II-R2, II-R3, III-R1, and III-R2 zones. Climate and resources show an overall negative correlation. (2) The I-R2 zone has the highest heat index and heat consumption, which are 56.21 W/m 2 and 0.38 GJ/m 2 ·a, respectively, while the III-R1 zone has the lowest heat index and the III-R2 zone has the lowest heat consumption, which is 33.57 W/m 2 and 0.18 GJ/m 2 ·a, respectively. (3) Heat indexes are reduced less than heat consumption as the rate of energy efficiency in buildings increases. (4) The new zoning and heat consumption modeling provides a computational basis for retrofitting heating systems in existing urban settlements. • Proposed a two-tier zoning method based on coldness and resource abundance. • The first integrated application of multiple clustering methods to the delineation of resource areas. • Coldness and resource abundance have a tendency to be mutually exclusive in different regions. • The variation of heat index with the energy efficiency ratio of the building is lower than the heat consumption. • Reference values for heat index and heat consumption based on the level of existing urban settlements are proposed.