CouPED

The CouPED project addresses this need by developing and validating Business Model Archetypes (BMAs) and governance frameworks that enable the fair, flexible, and efficient integration of these emerging actors. The project formulates and evaluates innovative BMAs and validates them across four complementary case studies (Sønderborg, Heide, Vienna, Nancy). Each demonstration represents a distinct configuration of industrial–urban symbiosis, stakeholder structures, and multi-energy system layouts, collectively providing a comprehensive testbed for replicability and upscaling of low-carbon solutions. Through a multi-criteria assessment framework (business, financial, and policy), CouPED delivers replicable, standardised solutions for PED-scale decarbonisation and multi-energy system optimisation—filling a key gap in Europe’s transition toward renewable, interconnected urban energy systems. In doing so, it establishes a new state of the art in the convergence of technical, economic, and institutional innovations, paving the way for a coherent, market-ready framework for sector coupling and PED-scale decarbonisation.

The project will develop business models that reduce investment risks, improve viability, and lower heating costs while reducing greenhouse gas. By incorporating affordability, fair pricing, and stakeholder participation, CouPED will promote an inclusive energy transition, help address energy poverty, and support job creation in emerging low-carbon sectors. The project will also deliver policy recommendations, governance frameworks, and replication guidelines to facilitate the deployment of sector-coupled heating solutions. Through transferable business models, open-access tools, validated case studies, and guidance, CouPED will enable municipalities, utilities, and industries across Europe to replicate and scale waste heat integration and low-carbon DHC solutions. CouPED incorporates four case studies—wastewater treatment with pyrolysis, brick manufacturing, PtX and CCUS (Sønderborg), hydrogen hubs and industrial waste heat (Heide), data center waste heat with heat pumps and DAC (Vienna), and biowaste-to-energy and PV-integrated municipal systems (Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy)—to validate sector coupling business models across diverse urban, industrial, and governance contexts.