Urbio rolls out AI software across Europe to accelerate district heating planning

Urbio is making its AI-powered platform available across Europe, empowering more planners to accelerate district heating deployment. After supporting projects in over 200 cities in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, the company will open free access to its software in November 2025. The goal: help utilities, consultants, and public actors move beyond legacy spreadsheets toward more efficient and scalable workflows.

Built for scale, complexity and data

The district heating industry has a scaling problem. As European cities race to decarbonize their building stock and hit national targets, planners struggle with legacy software and data blind spots. Urbio has spent the last five years solving these bottlenecks—and is now making its solution available to the wider market.

“Our mission is to accelerate the decarbonisation of buildings,” says Sébastien Cajot, Urbio’s CEO. “District heating is Europe’s best lever to reach net zero — and AI can remove the bottlenecks slowing its rollout.”

Since 2020, the company has co-developed its human-in-the-loop AI with utilities and district heating developers. The result: a proven platform capable of optimising networks of several thousands of buildings, managing multiple heating centers, and providing unique access to reliable data at large scale with building-scale granularity.

Two Pillars, One Platform

Urbio's software tackles heat planning from two angles:

Network Design Optimization: The platform's flagship capability handles the heavy lifting of district heating network design—optimizing pipe routing, sizing, and heating centers. Unlike traditional tools, it scales seamlessly from small district-sized projects to city-wide networks involving thousands of buildings, thanks to customizable parameters that adapt to local requirements.

Plug-and-Play Digital Twins: Equally innovative is Urbio's approach to data. The platform provides building-scale granularity up to national-scale, combining open datasets, scientific models, and user-uploaded layers – including API integrations with CRMs and other data sources – into a unified, secure environment.

“Combining data and design in one app means planners can explore heat demand at a strategic level and drill down into detailed network design, all within the same environment”, adds Sébastien Cajot.

Proven Benefits

In markets where Urbio is already present, customers are already cutting planning time and increasing ROI on infrastructure investments.

In Germany,  e-con reduced costs and delivery time for feasibility studies, securing funding under Germany’s funding program (BEW) thanks to Urbio’s automated data processing and reporting.

In Belgium, Resolia uses Urbio’s national-scale data access to analyse building energy demand and identify network opportunities across municipalities. Work that once took weeks now happens in minutes.

In Switzerland, EKT accelerates network expansion by mapping CRM data and customer requests directly in Urbio, reporting district heating growth by 10% year over year.

“Urbio lets us literally visualize where to grow our networks. We're connecting more buildings, faster, because we can rapidly spot opportunities and manage customer requests all in one app.”

 — Sandro Lersch, Project Lead, Heat Projects at EKT

Free access in EU

As of November, Urbio will be within reach for every utility, consultant, and public authority across Europe. With a new self-service interface, users can sign up, launch a project, and explore AI-powered workflows within minutes — at no cost.

For advanced users, paid plans unlock additional projects and features, with a pricing model designed to respect early-stage budget constraints.

With this step, Urbio opens a new chapter in Europe’s digital heat transition — one where AI and data-driven workflows can become part of every planner’s toolkit.

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About Urbio

Urbio is an impact-driven software company founded in 2020, developing AI-powered solutions for heating network planning and design. The platform combines network design optimization and plug-and-play digital twins to help utilities, consultants and public authorities across Europe accelerate the deployment of renewable heating infrastructure.