The keys to decarbonising Europe’s heating and cooling – EurActiv

Fivefactors are holding back the energy transition to a zero emissions Europe by 2050, writes Thomas Nowak.

Thomas Nowak is Secretary-General of the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA).

The way we use energy in our society needs to change if we want to keep global warming well below 2C, as stipulated at COP21 in Paris. This transition needs to include decision-makers on all levels and must above all include citizens.

A world without fossil fuels seems daunting, but the energy transformation is already happening: its entering peoples psyches, production cost is going down, and its cleaning out our grids: in 2016, 86% of the new capacity built across Europe came from renewables, thats 21.1GW of new clean energy power entering our system.

This is true for electricity, but where is heating and cooling? The sector is responsible for 51% of final energy use in Europe and about 27% of CO2 emissions. Decarbonising heating and cooling is a tremendous challenge: even in new buildings, the market uptake of low emission technologies is too slow and the renovation sub-sector is suffering from an even lower renovation rate.

Heating and cooling is a sector governed by tradition. If you need heat, you burn something this is common practice, understood and mostly unchanged since our early forefathers lived in caves. Cooling started with ice and quickly moved to electricity, using the refrigerant cycle. Important in everybodys daily lives, heating and cooling technology is hidden in basements and on rooftops connected via pipes and tubes to radiators, floor heating systems or ceiling boxes.

A good heating/cooling system is a working system out of sight, out of mind. On commercial levels and in industrial processes, the same applies on a much larger scale. Functionality and reliability have too often been prioritised over innovation: why change a running system? Heating and cooling is not characterised by short innovation cycles and many systems are operated even past their expected useful life. Yet, we do need to increase the speed of change and we need it to happen fast if we are to get to zero emissions by 2050, only 33 years away.

The energy transformation implies an overhaul of the entire value chain, from research and development to manufacturing to installation and maintenance. Todays heating industry is still dominated by fossil fuels with market shares of green heating solutions not even close to the level needed for reaching zero emissions.

But there is a bright side to it: technologies for a decarbonised sector exist and manufacturers know how to make and deploy low-to-zero emission 2050-ready heating solutions, air conditioning systems and cooling equipment. In the construction sector, the know-how to build, refurbish or renovate a building to near zero energy standards exists. And industry is experimenting with circular economy concepts that include reusing energy.

If technologies exist, what is the problem? Five key factors are inhibiting green solutions from being the most cost efficient and most easily deployed:

Addressing these points will help to unleash the power of individual, corporate, and municipal investments in favour of a more fully decarbonised heating and cooling system. This can be re-enforced further. Policymakers must give a strong signal to end-users and industries on the need for change and the incompatibility of fossil-based solutions with the 2050 goals to reach a zero emissions economy for Europe.

This years #DecarbHeat forumwill lay the groundwork for how to achieve that by taking stock of best practices in residential, commercial and industrial applications.

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The keys to decarbonising Europe's heating and cooling - EurActiv