Comprehensive zoning of biomass energy heating in EU countries reference for China from European experience

Heat is the largest energy end-use in the world, accounting for about 50％of global final energy consumption. In 2019, the International Energy Agency pointed out that the development of renewable energy heating has become a key way for the global response to climate change, environmental pollution control, energy transfor-mation and sustainable development. Biomass energy as a priority for the development of renewable heat sources has been valued by countries around the world. Developed earlier in the EU countries, their biomass heating technology is more mature, and their policy system is more comprehensive. Accounting for 86％of the total renewable thermal energy consumption, biothermal energy in these countries has achieved significant ef-fect and become an important driving force for the decarbonization of the heating industry. This practice has a very high demonstration effect globally. This paper constructs a comprehensive zoning theoretical frame-work of biomass energy heating and utilization in the EU countries. Based on the calculation of the supply and demand potential of biomass energy heating system, the FCM method is used to quantify the status of biomass resource utilization in 28 EU countries. The results show that there are significant differences in the utilization of biomass energy heating in the EU countries, which can be divided into five categories of comprehensive zones, which are the key development category (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia), re-source priority category (Austria, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia), policy-oriented category (Ger-many, Italy, Portugal, and Cyprus), good-potential category (Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Spain, Poland, France, and Slovakia)and under-developed category (UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta). At the same time, this paper discusses the characteristics and causes of biomass heating utilization of different types of EU countries, and summarizes the mature heating systems and rich experience in the EU countries with China ' s current heating situation and its future challenges concerning renewable energy devel-opment. Finally, this study provides some implications for China ' s clean heating development, energy effi-cient use, energy supply security and energy structure upgrade.