An analysis of heating energy scenarios of a Finnish case district

District heating is widely used in heating buildings in Finland. Due to new European legislation, increasing adaption of renewables, and new stakeholders in the heating business, Finnish district heating needs to evolve. This paper analyzes energy and emissions impacts of different heating energy scenarios in a typical Finnish district heated area. A period of 20 years (2015-2035) was studied assuming the future development of the building stock. The conservative, extensive and extreme scenarios assumed different amounts of solar energy and ground source heat pumps to be implemented as decentralized systems. In addition, two heat prosumer scenarios were analyzed, namely an industrial waste heat scenario and a modest solar heat prosumer scenario. Despite the increase of the buildings' total floor area by about a third, the combined heating and domestic hot water consumption per floor area was estimated to decrease by about 36%. The extreme scenario with ground source heat pumps and a solar thermal system decreased the annual centralized heat production by 34% and the industrial waste heat scenario by 32%. The waste heat scenario decreased the emissions the most.