We now apply our method on three counties in Sweden: Kalmar in the south, Orebro somewhat in the middle and Vasternorrland in the north. Table 8.2 summarizes some general facts about the counties in question. When choosing counties for this analysis, we considered the degree of urbanization of the regions due to its positive covariance with district heating.

After estimating the total heat demand for each county, we restrict ourselves to the identification of the 500 x 500 m2 clusters where the total heat demand for all building types is at least 0.5 GWh. To arrive at the potential for small-scale district heating and CHP, we subtract the existing district heating. The geographic loca­tion of the 500 x 500 m2 clusters with at least 0.5 GWh is shown in Figure 8.6.

The concentration of the population and thus of the heat demand in larger urban areas is obvious, and the very sparsely populated areas of western Vasternorrland, and northern parts of Orebro are apparent.

Table 8.3 summarizes the results obtained for different ranges of heat demand in the three counties analyzed. Though the number of clusters seems impressive at first, they actually include areas that are already served by district-heating grids. These areas need to be now subtracted from the total. Once this is done, we estimate the small-scale district heating potential at 0.9 TWh in Kalmar, 0.9 TWh in Orebro and 1.4TWh in Vasternorrland. These figures indicate that a very significant additional portion of the heat demand in these counties can be met with small-scale district heating. These increments are equivalent to 42 per cent of the total heat demand in Kalmar, 28 per cent in Orebro and 47 per cent in Vasternorrland.