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Gas vs Electrical Heating - an ecodesign case-study
Concerns about CO2 and climate change are greater than ever. Residential heating is responsible for a considerable part of CO2 emissions that go into our atmosphere.
The objective of this case study is to compare the environmental impact of a heating system using a gas conventional boiler and other using electrical heaters at the point of use. The simulations were made taking into account the conditions for a normal house and a low energy house. Several electricity generation mixes were also used in order to assess the impact of electrical heating in different countries.
The results show that electrical heating has great advantages when clean electricity generation is in place, e.g. using renewable energy sources or nuclear energy.
The study was conducted by the Leonardo ENERGY team using its Ecodesign Toolbox. The study is still a draft open for comments until the 23rd of November.
To see the full report and data, follow this link.
For more information on the Ecodesign Toolbox, follow this link.
heating & cooling
| electric heating
| climate change
| efficiency
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2 Comments
#1 by Jacques Dubost on December 18, 2007 at 4:57 p.m.
Hypotheses to be reassessed:
In the diagram presented, the results for France show a level in CO2 emissions significantly lower for electrical heating than for gas heating.This is likely to be linked to hypotheses to be questionned which greatly modify the actual result: Electrical heating is mostly used in winter periods with peaks in the morning and in the evening.So the power generation mix to be used is neither base-load nor average mix, but rather semi-base or peak power generation.A newly installed electrical heating in France would typically use electricity generated by a mix of 67 % natural gas (combined cycle + gas turbines), 10 % oil, 13 % coal, and only 10 % nuclear.
The CO2 emissions for electrical heating will be around 600 g CO2/kWhe, which is more than twice the emissions from gas heating with a condensing boiler.
Thank you for your coment.
In fact, you raise a very valid point.
At a first stage, the modelling we performed used average generation mixes for the different countries. Some other colleagues also pointed this situation as well as the even higher efficiency of heat pumps, specially air-to-air heat pumps.
Therefore, an upgrade of the current eco-sheet is foreseen, this time using more detailed data regarding the marginal generation mixes and crossing this information with the demand profiles for heating.
a further step will be performed to include also heat pumps, provided that we get enough consistent information on their energy consumption.
I will make these upgrades available here as well.