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  • Review Article
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District heating in clean energy systems

Nature Reviews Clean Technology volume 1, pages 532–546 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

District heating (DH) can provide commercial and domestic heating, using excess heat that would otherwise be lost. However, existing systems are heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and many fail to fully exploit abundant waste heat sources. Technological development is needed to integrate these DH systems into evolving clean energy systems to support decarbonization. In this Review, we discuss the role DH can play as a clean technology in the transition towards future climate neutral societies. DH is already widely used in Northern Europe, Russia and China but uptake is low in other territories owing to low technology awareness. DH systems under development can use heat sources such as solar heating, geothermal heat and waste heat from data centres. Technological barriers to increasing the use of renewable and excess heat from new sources such as heat pumps, power-to-X and other industrial processes need to be overcome to make DH systems cleaner. The development of future DH technologies and infrastructure should focus lowering temperatures in the grids, and smart energy systems sector integration to better facilitate the use of variable renewable electricity supply.

Key points

  • District heating (DH) can integrate untapped waste heat and renewable heat sources otherwise unused.

  • DH technologies and infrastructures must adapt to the future context of smart energy systems.

  • DH can enable cost-effective and higher integration of renewable electricity, such as solar heat and geothermal heat.

  • Energy systems scenario and planning tools often lack abilities to analyse the system benefits of DH and cooling.

  • DH and cooling can increase equitable access to affordable, reliable and clean energy solutions through the provision of shared energy infrastructure on a community scale.

  • The decarbonization of DH systems should be supported by re-engineering activities in heat distribution and usage.

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Fig. 1: Resource savings and CO2e reductions from the operation of DH systems compared with a classic individual natural gas boiler.
Fig. 2: Future district heating and cooling systems.
Fig. 3: DH potentials in Europe.
Fig. 4: Geographical information systems application and approach.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Henrik Lund, Poul Alberg Østergaard, Peter Sorknæs, Steffen Nielsen, Meng Yuan & Jakob Zinck Thellufsen

  2. Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Iva Ridjan Skov & Brian Vad Mathiesen

  3. Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Sally M. Benson

  4. Department of Research and Development, AGFW-Projekt, Frankfurt, Germany

    Andrej Jentsch

  5. Department of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Xiliang Zhang

  6. Department of Energy and Buildings, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden

    Sven Werner

  7. Heatmatters, Gerrards Cross, UK

    Robin Wiltshire

  8. Department of Energy and Development, Europa-Universität, Flensburg, Germany

    Bernd Möller

  9. Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Neven Duic

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Contributions

H.L. designed and structured the Review, drafted parts of the manuscript and incorporated the comments from the other authors in the final version. P.A.Ø. drafted parts of the manuscript, contributed to the initial discussion of the idea and incorporated the comments from the other authors in the final version. P.S., S.N., I.R.S., M.Y., J.Z.T., B.V.M. and S.M.B. drafted parts of the manuscript and contributed to the initial discussion of the idea. A.J., X.Z., S.W., R.W., B.M. and N.D. contributed with comments and feedback and made substantial revisions of the manuscript as well as adding important literature additional to the initial bibliometric analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henrik Lund.

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Nature Reviews Clean Technology thanks Stanislav Chicherin; Daniel Friedrich; and Victor Soltero, who co-reviewed with Diego Rodríguez Pastor, for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Glossary

Combined production of heat and power

(CHP). When heat and power are produced on the same plant, which is typically a power plant utilizing the excess heat.

District heating and cooling

(DHC). When heating and/or cooling demands are supplied in networks for a group of buildings.

Fourth-generation DH

(4GDH). Smart thermal grids that provide the heat supply of low-energy buildings with low grid losses; integrating low-temperature heat sources.

Power-to-X

(PtX). Means using renewable electricity, for example, wind power, to create something else (‘X’). The X created is an energy carrier — usually renewable hydrogen — which can power medium-duty to heavy-duty transport or be used in industry.

Renewable energy source

(RES). Sources such as wind, solar and geothermal energy.

Space heating

Heating demands without hot water.

Thermal energy storage

A storage used for heating and/or cooling demands.

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Lund, H., Østergaard, P.A., Sorknæs, P. et al. District heating in clean energy systems. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 1, 532–546 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-025-00076-8

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