Energy use and its environmental impact is one of the most pressing problems facing our society. The plan for energy improvement in Barcelona is the first approximation to the structured knowledge of energy and related environmental situation for the city of Barcelona (Spain). Within the plan, different tools have been developed. The main aims of the specifically developed tools are the city energy balance anal¬ysis, future scenarios evaluation, and cost benefit optimiza¬tion. The set of developed tools is found to be very useful in the decision-making process for community planning purposes.

An important amount of data have been linked with the city database, with building-by-building information using a geographical information system (GIS). The same data have been introduced into an energy and environmental balance simulator of the city, a global tool developed within the Plan that is able to calculate the total and sectorial energy and emission balances of the city for different situations, such as the base year, or for different scenarios. The balance simulator has been calibrated for the base year, taking into account the real use data provided by the utilities.

In this paper, the approach to local energy planning and the basic methodology are explained. Furthermore, as an example, the housing sector analysis is explained in more details.

Units: SI