Spatio-temporal pathways for active gas exit in Vienna

On Vienna’s path to climate neutrality, disconnecting about 600,000 homes from the gas grid is a significant challenge. The STAGE Vienna project supports this process by developing decision-ready, science-based pathways for a socially responsible and cost-effective transformation of Vienna's urban heating system. The central focus of the project is analyzing exit options in the context of the EU Gas and Hydrogen Internal Market Directive. Two core problems are addressed: the "utility death spiral," where shrinking user numbers drive up network charges for remaining customers, and "split incentives," which prevent tenants from responding to cost incentives to switch heating systems. As a solution STAGE Vienna proposes a grid decommissioning that is synchronized in space and time with targeted support, to protect vulnerable groups, and early, continuous stakeholder involvement to secure broad legitimacy. Methodologically, the project combines a spatially explicit planner perspective, mapping the gas decommissioning, and an economic perspective, modelling the exit dynamics as well as the demand. Both approaches have the same high-resolution data basis, stemming from administrative data and are co-developed and implemented jointly with local actors, who are responsible for the decommissioning. The main target groups of the project are decision-makers at the City of Vienna and the gas grid operators, who receive concrete tools to estimate network cost dynamics and social impacts, plus a roadmap for the implementation. Further, the published scientific results will also contribute to the knowledge on grid decommissioning in Europe and large-scale spatial planning.