How to stay warm during the cold winter days?
What can Open Data tell you about heating?
Falling temperatures across Europe signal the start of winter season. The favourite season for those loving snow and the holidays. It is also the season which often brings an unfriendly guest: sky-high heating bills. In order to stay warm and comfortable during the cold and dark winters many people heat up their houses, resulting in a sharp rise of the demand for heating in the winter months in Europe. Demand for heating tends to fluctuate over the course of the day, determined by human activity, house size, climate, insulation, fuel choice and fuel prices. This results in the fact that the energy consumption numbers differ substantially across Europe, but typically for all countries, demand is higher in the winter than in the summer.
What can Open Data tell us about the resource consumption in Europe? A query on "energy consumption" results in 545 data sets, while 1,026 datasets can be found for "heating". The Finnish Open Data portal for instance provides annual information of the resource consumption per capita in the Finnish Capital Region Pääkaupunkiseutu and the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen. As shown in the figure below, information is provided for several years and for various sources of energy, among others district heating, electricity and oil.
Want to explore our Open Data yourself to see what it can tell you? Take a look at our database and see what you can find!