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I'm also wondering what's going to happen with heating in general. In Germany for example heat pumps are all but required now for all new heating systems in homes. But why do we need to have one heater per home? District heating can be done far more efficiently than individual buildings, but it's almost never considered. Of course companies can make a lot more money selling hundreds of thousands of gest pumps than they can building a few district heating systems. And those would again most likely be powered by fossil fuels, as existing ones outside of China and Russia are.
Anyway, I've just been thinking that there are alternatives, but instead profits and "individual responsibility" must be prioritized rather than the climate emergency.
They have district heating pumps in Workers and Resources, but I am really unfamiliar with the idea. Also it rarely gets cold enough here to require them (so I turn off weather patterns when doing a local build). Fascinated by the idea though. Probably better for apartment blocks than suburbs, which I also do.
Individual places can still be insulated and better designed. I'm worried about summer, am not enjoying our current number of 40+ degree days :(
Cooling more efficiently is definitely something we need to work on as well. I always imagine a symmetric system which can heat and cool using basically the same infrastructure, but I'm not sure how realistic that is.
District heating has been done, AFAIK, in small cities with smaller apartment blocks, big cities with apartment high rises, and suburbs and villages with primarily one or two family homes. It can also be used for industrial processes. I'm sure there are plenty of issues, such as energy losses during transport of heat from the source to the consumers, but nothing we can't and haven't overcome.
At its simplest, district heating just a central water heater for an area, where the hot water is then pumped into houses to heat water for local heating and hot water needs. It can also be combined with heat pumps on the consumption side to improve efficiency and reduce the need for a high temperature difference.
If it's hot water, you can get water solar panels/rigs, too. Probably not too helpful in some places but many places get enough hours of sunlight to start the hot water going. On top of insulating the pipes, most of the heat lost on the way to the rooms might be gained by being able to start the heating at however many degrees higher than it would be if you pulled it straight out the ground. Also good for jacuzzis in the summer, when you'll be getting 60°C+ water out the panels and nothing to heat except water for pots. It's a luxury but only because water's so expensive to heat and we're aiming for luxury, aren't we?