This study aims to assess the role and need of (seasonal) thermal energy storage in the next generation renewable, and sustainable central heating systems for the built environment in the Netherlands. Specifically, the neighbourhood "Karwijhof" in the city Nagele which is transitioning to a collective renewable district heating network incorporating 24 users. The emphasis of this study lies on the technology for storing thermal energy and two different heat collection technologies. The storage of heat is done using an underground seasonal thermal energy storage (USTES), in this case an underground sensible heat storage tank using water as storage medium. The system relies on a small scale district heating network (DHN) for the distribution of heat. For this research two heat collection technologies are considered resulting in two systems to be compared, both incorporating the USTES as main system component. The first system relies on heat collection by solar thermal collectors, the second on an air-water heat pump. Both systems are modelled in the Matlab-Simulink software environment and back tested on historic (publicly available) weather data provided by the Royal Dutch meteorological institute (KNMI). Different system sizes are tested on their key performance indicators through an iterative process. System sizes depend on the capacity of the main components which include: volume of the USTES, surface area of the solar thermal collectors, and air-water heat pump capacity. Key performance indicators include the levelised cost of heat (LCOH) and the seasonal coefficient of performance of the system which gives an indication on the autonomy of the system. To increase the autonomy of the systems a photo-voltaic (PV) array is considered for both systems to offset the electricity use. However, the systems are allowed to exchange electricity with the grid translating into the goal of "zero on the meter" autonomy. The model results show a mismatch between heat demand and generation. Demand peaks during winter from December-March while generation peaks during the summer months May-August. The USTES is needed to overcome this mismatch and ensure access to heat throughout the year. The results show that both systems can ensure heat throughout the year for the users considered during this study. However, systems cannot compete with traditional natural gas heating systems based on the LCOH. This is partly due to the high cost of the district heating network. The systems including a PV array show a LCOH that can compete with the traditional natural gas HR-boiler but are constraint by the rooftop area available during this study leading to a non competitive LCOH. Though, even with enough rooftop area for a PV array the systems cannot pay them self back relative to the base scenario due to the financing costs. During the study no subsidies were taken into account. Subsidies will be needed to make the renewable energy systems presented in this study financially more attractive in the short term. When considering the environmental benefits it can be argued that the systems are already competitive to the traditional natural gas heating systems. Further studies should focus on efficiency gains in the district heating network and the control mechanism of the air-water heat pump. It is expected that the LCOH of systems as proposed in this study will decline in the future as a result of cost reductions and/or efficiency increases of the system components. Also, a lower LCOH is deemed achievable for neighbourhoods with simpler district heating networks (i.e. less meters of DHN piping per user).