Euractiv
Summary
Bringing down emissions from buildings to zero might be the hardest nut to crack for the European Green Deal. With heating and cooling in buildings responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of emissions, the importance of its decarbonisation is paramount.
As the current annual renovation rate is below 1% and more than 70% of heating in buildings is supplied by old and inefficient boilers, buildings are unanimously recognised as a hard-to-decarbonise sector by the European Renovation Wave Strategy published in October 2020, the European Union (EU) Energy Efficiency Directive (EED)and various strategies of individual European Member States.
Due to the heterogeneity of the building stock and climatic conditions in Europe, a one-solution-fits-all approach will bring more headaches than benefits. A range of solutions will be needed to supply efficient and increasingly renewable heat to and in buildings. It will include reducing demand, direct electrification, district heating, high-efficiency combined heat and power, waste heat, solar thermal, and geothermal.
The choice between different decarbonisation solutions will largely depend on the seasonality of heat demand, the variability and limited capacity of renewable electricity supply, constrained electricity grids, customer preferences and the costs. Direct electrification with heat pumps is not always economically feasible in every building and will double the peak demand for electricity in winter in most European countries.
Therefore, the efficient use of hydrogen and renewable gases in buildings will be needed. In this regard, cogeneration, which combines the generation of heat and electricity in a single unit to be more efficient, will play a key role to complement an increasingly electrified and renewable energy system. This could be done via district heating combined with large-scale cogeneration or via micro-cogeneration systems inside buildings.
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