Ricerc@Sapienza

Cities play a key role in driving the transition to sustainable energy. Urban areas represent
between 60% and 80% of global energy consumption and are a significant source of CO2 emissions,
making energy management at the urban scale an important area of research. Urban energy systems
have a strong influence on the environment, economy, social dimensions and urban spatial
planning. Energy consumption affects the urban microclimate, urban comfort, human health, and
conversely, urban physical, economic and social characteristics affect the energy urban profile. In
order to improve the quality of energy strategies, policies, and plans, local authorities need decision
support tools, like energy potential mapping, which have risen significance in the last decades.
Energy data are crucial for those tools. They can increase the quality and effectiveness of energy
planning but also support the integration between energy and spatial planning. Energy data can
also stimulate citizen engagement as well as encourage sustainable behaviours and CO2 emission
reduction. This paper aims to increase the practice of data‐aware planning, through the study of
problems in energy data acquisition and processing observed in European projects focused on
developing energy mapping tools. The problems observed attend to two main areas: technical and
socio‐economic issues. Those were derived from a comparison of energy mapping tools, and the
work conducted for the PLANHEAT development. The scope of the research is to understand the
main recurring issues in energy data acquisition and processing, in order to overcome the barriers
in data availability. Increasing awareness of the relevance of energy data can foster the use of energy
mapping tools, increasing the quality of energy policies and planning.