###### Abstract
As the chief of the Climate Protection and Energy Baden-Wurttemberg says, \"Heating networks can provide system services for an integrated and sustainable energy system, which is why they are considered to play a central role in the transformation of the heat transition\" [9]. Addressing this comment, Germany, with its 11,700 communities, which will all be obligated in the future to have such plans, started to work on developing an appropriate strategy in order to solve this problem. Without having fast and widely applicable automatic tools, the achievement of this target would be quite impossible. Therefore, the work done within this paper happens to be very necessary and urgent, with a view to the fast-coming radical changes in the energy policy. Also in Poland, the so-called studies of spatial development documents specifying the municipality spatial conditions are available and consider also, like in case of the Wroclaw City, the energy issues ([[https://gis.um.wroc.pl/imap/?locale=plkgui=classic&sessionID=2776588](https://gis.um.wroc.pl/imap/?locale=plkgui=classic&sessionID=2776588)]([https://gis.um.wroc.pl/imap/?locale=plkgui=classic&sessionID=2776588](https://gis.um.wroc.pl/imap/?locale=plkgui=classic&sessionID=2776588)), accessed on 8 November 2023), e.g., the heating pipes available and potential areas for renewable energy supply. District heating in Poland is facing many challenges in order to achieve the decarbonization of the DH sector. In the largest cities of Poland, like Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Lodz and Wroclaw, there are DH networks available. The DH system in Wroclaw is concentrated in the Wroclaw Heat and Power Plant Group Cogeneration JSCo and consists of SHP Wroclaw, CHP Czechnice and CHP Zawidawie [10]. The direction of transformation of the entire heating sector in Poland is described in two basic documents, which are the National Energy and Climate Plan for 2021-2030 (KPEiK) [11] and in the Poland's Energy Policy until 2040 (PEP2040) [12]. The documents emphasize good air quality, which makes it necessary to transform heating. One of the assumptions of the Polish goals is that approximately 1.5 million new dwellings will be incorporated into the heating network by 2030. How it should be achieved is until now not defined. Therefore, also in Poland, the methodology developed in this study will be useful in order to develop the strategic DH planning. According to the report [13], the plan for the restructuring and modernization of the heating sector in Poland should start with smaller towns, where the risk of losing their existing sources of heat supply can cause the worsening of air quality. Replacing DH with individual heat sources would cause the difficulty to comply with environmental standards. Therefore, there is a need to review smaller DH systems in terms of cost-effectiveness and especially with regard to finding pathways for their expansion and transformation. Hereby, if a DH network is indicated in the local development plan, the connection of existing and newly constructed buildings to it should be encouraged by regulations. Now, the heating sector faces difficulties with the regulation of the spatial planning of the cities. The rules for the construction of new heating pipelines are very time-consuming and expensive. This is a further barrier to the development of DH, which can be limited only to those parts of cities that are already equipped with DH networks. The expansion of existing DH to new city parts can be limited. In Poland, there exists also a problem of closing down small existing DH networks because of financial issues. This would cause the need for individual dwellings to find other simple solutions for their heat supply, which are not really environmentally friendly ones and can contribute to an increase in the smog problem and a negative impact on human health. From an environmental point of view, it is better to supply buildings with central generating unit, which can be controlled with regard to emission standards, than a lot of small heat sources.