Energy system data collection and validation for pilot areas of PLANtoACT project

This repository presents the results of the data assembly carried out within Work Package 2 (WP2, Task 2.1) of the PLANtoACT project.

PLANtoACT is a LIFE Programme–funded project (October 2025–September 2028) that develops, tests, and promotes a stakeholder-driven, spatially detailed integrated energy planning approach to help European Local and Regional Authorities move from clean energy transition targets to coordinated, financed, and implementable action.

Scope of the data assembly

The data assembly documents the energy profiles of the five pilot regions of the project: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), Lombardia (Italy), Alba County (Romania), Oberland (Germany), and the Porto Metropolitan Area (Portugal); and of fifteen pilot cities/municipalities, three within each region.

Data collection methodology and validation

Data were requested from the respective pilot partners through a standardized data collection template, this way ensuring the inclusion of region-specific and locally validated information. In parallel, the project team carried out an independent data collection at the regional level, following the same template and relying exclusively on publicly available sources. The deviation between the two sets of data points was then calculated, allowing the results obtained from open sources to be compared against, and validated with, those collected locally by project partners. This approach allowed to assess the completeness and correctness of open data, as well as highlight any inconsistencies in the partners’ datasets.

Besides the data collected for the study areas, the repository provides a datasets catalogue, covering building stock, land use, energy use, transport, climate, economics, and others. The aim of this catalogue is to assist regions and municipalities, both pilot partners within the project and other regions/municipalities interested in replicating the proposed methodology, in identifying and accessing open data that can be further utilized for the development of CET plans.

Repository contents

The repository is organized into four components:

1.       Datasets catalogue: a comprehensive list of datasets to support the data collection process.

2.       Energy data regions: filled templates for each pilot region containing data on energy production and consumption; a dataset containing data points collected for five pilot regions in parallel with the partners and their deviations.

3.       Energy data cities/municipalities: filled templates for 3 pilot cities/municipalities within each of pilot regions, including datapoints collected for the regional level with addition of district heating share.

4.       Energy data templates: blank templates used for data collection in the PLANtoACT project, reusable for replicating the methodology.

Template structure

The template includes four thematic sheets: Final energy consumption, Electricity production, Thermal production, Mobility. Each sheet records the region, reference year, unit of measurement, data source, and methodological notes or assumptions.

·       Final energy consumption sections include: electricity; district heating; individual heating not connected to district heating systems; industrial consumption; and transport.

·       Electricity production includes electricity power plants, CHP plants, total electricity production and consumption, and storage.

·       Thermal production distinguishes between renewable sources, such as solar, biomass, biogas, geothermal, and heat pumps, and non-renewable sources, which are natural gas, oil, and coal; records energy generation, fuel consumption, installed capacity, and average efficiency, and total thermal production and consumption.

·       Mobility covers transport-related indicators, including number of vehicles and fuel consumption; includes rail, passenger cars, heavy and light trucks, and buses.

Complementary data

Alongside the energy data, the pilot partners provided hourly profiles describing the hourly variation of demand and production across the energy sources and carriers covered by the template. The hourly profiles can be accessed at the Zenodo repository of the PLANtoACT project: https://zenodo.org/communities/plantoact/.

To enable comprehensive energy modelling, the energy data were further complemented with spatial data characterizing the building stock and estimating the renewable energy potential of the study areas. This spatial approach captures the geographic variability across different areas, enables the integration of multiple data sources, and provides a visual and intuitive means of presenting results to stakeholders and decision-makers. The spatial data can be accessed through the following repository: https://gitlab.inf.unibz.it/plantoact.