Cultural heritage as a structural modifier of rooftop solar deploymentStegnar, Gašper (Avtor) Čižman, Jure (Avtor) Bevk, Tadej (Avtor) Debevec, Maja (Avtor) Gantar, Damjana (Avtor) solar cadastreurban energy planningdecarbonsationrooftop photovoltaicsCultural-heritage protection constrains rooftop photovoltaic (PV) deployment across a large share of the European building stock, yet existing solar cadastres ignore heritage-related regulatory constraints and therefore systematically overestimate deployable capacity in historic urban environments. This study develops and applies a heritage-aware framework that integrates building-level energy-demand modelling, a geographic information system (GIS)-based rooftop PV cadastre and scenario-based interpretation of heritage regulations to assess realistic decarbonisation pathways for heritage-constrained building stocks. Applied to the Municipality of Maribor, Slovenia (27,249 buildings), the framework shows that formally protected buildings (10.3% of the stock) account for 31.9% of technically suitable rooftop area — more than three times their share. Across five heritage-based scenarios, deployable PV potential ranges from 68% to 93% of the technical baseline (≈308–422 GWh/yr against 452.55 GWh/yr), determined primarily by institutional interpretation rather than the legal framework. Under deep electrification toward 2050, rooftop PV cannot achieve municipal self-sufficiency, leaving a residual gap of 8–22% of demand; notably, deeper renovation without relaxed PV admissibility widens rather than narrows this gap, showing that renovation depth and PV admissibility are complementary policy levers. Heritage protection thus acts as a structural modifier rather than a binary barrier, providing a transferable basis for integrating heritage constraints into solar cadastres, urban energy planning and national renovation strategies.Elsevier20262026-08-28 12:29:19Neznano32161Nizozemskasl© 2026 The Authors.