Overview of support activities and projects of the European Commission on energy efficiency and renewable energy in the heating and cooling sector

Heating and cooling consume half of the EU's energy and much of it is wasted. The lion's share of heating and cooling is still generated from fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, while only 18% is generated from renewable energy. In order to fulfil the EU's climate and energy goals, the heating and cooling sector must therefore sharply reduce its energy consumption and cut its use of fossil fuels. To this end the European Commission adopted a heating and cooling strategy in February 2016 as part of the wider Energy Union Package. A number of activities and projects funded by the programmes of European Union are supporting this new EU heating and cooling strategy. This document provides an overview of the EU-funded projects in the area of heating and cooling. It focuses on the Horizon 2020 programme for research and innovation (2014-2020) and its predecessors: the former Seventh Framework (FP7) and Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) programmes. For practical reasons, the scope of the programmes has been limited to the following: Horizon 2020 Calls 2014-2015, FP7 Smart Cities Calls 2012 to 2013 and the IEE Calls 2011 to 2013.