While climate agreements are made on an international level, the measures for mitigating climate change must be executed on a local scale. Designing energy and climate related strategies on the level of municipalities has been hampered by the lack of comprehensive data on the current status of energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions on the local level. A novel approach based on the so-called spatial turn in energy and climate policies has now been established in the form of the Energy Mosaic Austria, which represents a comprehensive energy and greenhouse gas inventory for all Austrian municipalities considering different purposes of energy consumption and different energy sources. The inventory is based on the linkage of bottom-up and top-down operations, utilizing data on land use and mobility structures on the municipal level. The outcomes provide a detailed insight into the pattern of energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions that are resolved on the municipal level. A spatially differentiated analysis of the inventory yields dependencies of the energy consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions on spatial structures particularly due to the fractions of different types of land use including mobility. With the energy mosaic Austria, local policy makers are given an inventory with unprecedented spatial and contentual resolution, which is fully coherent with more coarse-grained provincial and nationwide compilations of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and elucidates the scope of action in energy and climate policy from the municipal to the nationwide level.

In light of global warming and the energy turn, sector coupling has gained increasing interest in recent years, from both the scientific community and politics. In the following article it is hypothesized that efficient multifaceted sector coupling solutions depend on detailed spatial and temporal characteristics of energy demand and supply. Hence, spatiotemporal modelling is used as a methodology of integrated spatial and energy planning, in order to determine favourable sector coupling strategies at the local level. A case study evaluation was carried out for both central and decentral renewable energy sources. Considering the high temporal resolutions of energy demand and supply, the results revealed a feasible operation of a district heating network in the central areas of the case study municipalities. Additionally, building integrated solar energy technologies are capable of providing large amount of excess energy that could serve other demand sectors, such as the mobility sector, or could be used for Power-to-X solutions. It is suggested that sector coupling strategies require spatial considerations and high temporal comparisons, in order to be reasonably integrated in spatial and urban planning.

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<p>In the course of the energy transition, spatial and temporal aspects of energy demand and renewable energy supply are increasingly coming to the forefront of scientific studies and political debates. In this context, the use of spatiotemporal models has been identified as a decisive methodology for integrated spatial and energy planning. However, the transformation of spatiotemporal results into concrete spatial planning instruments has not yet been sufficiently discussed. Therefore, this research aims to provide answers by using specific results of a case study in Austria. In the case study evaluation, energy demand is considered in high spatial resolution using statistic data in 250m raster cells as a basis. The results are supplemented with an assessment of high spatio-temporal solar energy potentials. Taking these results as a basis, the following questions are addressed: How can spatial and temporal evaluations of energy demand and supply support the energy transition by means of spatial planning on the local level? What measures with respect to renewable energy generation, storage and grid capacity can be derived and which effects are expected to be achieved? With respect to renewable energy provision, initial results reveal added value for the spatial delimitation of district heating supply areas. Further, building integrated solar energy generation reveals high shares of excess energy – both thermal and electric – which has to be properly used, taking into account different sectors of energy demand. As a consequence, the results of this research also offer the opportunity to reflect on the benefits of sector coupling, as well as the new organization of energy supply via energy communities.</p>