Barriers to district heating deployment: insights from literature and experts

Over the last century, district heating (DH) has only achieved global market shares of around 10 %. To reach its potential market shares of 25–50 % in Europe by 2050, growth must drastically accelerate. But deployment of DH is hindered by barriers, potentially slowing this fast-paced transition of the heat system. In this paper, we identify barriers to the deployment of DH through manual and GPT-aided literature reviews. These reviews are complemented by a survey of 94 DH experts from Europe and North America, regions which account for approximately 20 % of global- and 93 % of European DH supply. We find that economic and political barriers are considered both most significant and most difficult to overcome. The importance of individual barriers varies between countries based on the existing shares of DH and renewable heat in DH supply respectively. The most important individual barriers include high installation costs, regulatory uncertainty and insufficient policies to integrate DH with other energy sectors. If a faster pace of system-integrated DH deployment is desired, it is critical to reduce the underlying investment risk of district heating projects through an expansion of integrated energy system planning, and regulations such as zoning and mandates. • 173 barriers to district heating deployment identified via literature and experts. • 94 surveyed experts ranked barriers according to importance and difficulty. • Economic and political barriers are both most important and difficult to overcome. • Key barriers include costs, regulatory uncertainty and insufficient sector coupling. • Long-term planning certainty and integrated policies needed to achieve DH targets.