Le Nouvelliste features Urbio and OIKEN: How a "Google Maps of Energy" Accelerates District Heating Planning

We are thrilled to share that our collaboration with OIKEN, the leading energy distributor in Valais, was recently featured in the Swiss newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

In an article titled "Un 'Google Maps' de l’énergie pour décarboner le bâti," journalist Florent Bagnoud details how OIKEN is moving from static spreadsheets to our AI-driven software for district heating planning to fast-track the decarbonization of the built environment.

The "Google Maps" of Energy

Thierry Bernhard, Head of Energy Consulting at OIKEN, leads a team that previously spent weeks gathering cadastral data. Now, using Urbio—described as a "Google Maps" for energy—they can pull up a digital twin of downtown Sion in seconds.

With a few clicks, the platform reveals the hidden layers of the city: construction years, heating systems, roof surfaces, and estimated energy consumption.

"It is even capable of estimating and displaying the energy consumption of each building, or evaluating their photovoltaic production potential based on weather data," explains Bernhard in the interview.

From Data to Decarbonization

For OIKEN, the goal is ambitious: reducing direct emissions from buildings by 80% by 2040. To get there, they need to identify exactly where to build new networks.

Using our heat density maps, OIKEN identified high-impact zones in Sion's city center—specifically large emitters like the Centre Etoile and the former hospital site. Urbio’s data highlighted that connecting these dense urban assets to a renewable network was the only viable path to meeting emission targets.

William Ruppen, the engineer leading communal energy planning at OIKEN, notes that this data availability has changed the game for feasibility studies.

"By taking into account criteria such as the size and construction year of a building, the platform can estimate its oil consumption. This is data we didn't possess before, which today allows us to model decarbonization strategies with greater precision and speed."

Scaling District Heating Network Planning

OIKEN currently has around twenty district heating projects in motion across municipalities like Crans-Montana and Sierre. Urbio is proud to be the engine powering these decisions, helping engineers move from reactive analysis to proactive district heating network planning.

By combining public data with our proprietary machine learning models, we help utilities skip the manual data entry and focus on what they do best: engineering the future of energy.

As we expand into Germany and Belgium, we are excited to continue refining our platform based on feedback from power users like Thierry Bernhard and William Ruppen.

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You can read the original article on Le Nouvelliste's website here.

About OIKEN

With over 790 million kWh of electricity and 900 million kWh of heat distributed annually, OIKEN is the largest energy distributor in the Valais. OIKEN serves 24 municipalities between Salquenen and Vétroz. Through mandates, OIKEN also manages hydroelectric plants, drinking water supply, street lighting, multimedia services and electrical installations. OIKEN and its more than 500 employees and 180,000 customers activate the future.

About Urbio

Urbio is an impact-driven software company specialized in district heating planning, artificial intelligence and data. Founded in 2020, Urbio is a spinoff from climate-tech university EPFL in the heart of the Swiss Alps.