Heat Roadmap Europe: Identifying the balance between saving heat and supplying heat

Kenneth Hansen, David Connolly, Henrik Lund, David Drysdale and Jakob Zinck Thellufsen

Energy, 2016, vol. 115, issue P3, 1663-1671

Abstract: The cost of heat savings in buildings increase as more heat savings are achieved and hence, alternatives other than savings typically become more economically feasible at a certain level of heat reductions. The challenge addressed in this paper is to identify when the cost of heat savings become more expensive than the cost of sustainable heat supply, so society does not overinvest in heat saving measures. This study first investigates the heat saving potentials for different countries in Europe, along with their associated costs, followed by a comparison with alternative ways of supplying sustainable heating. Furthermore, the levelised cost of supplying sustainable heat is estimated for both a single technology and from an energy system perspective. The results are analysed by assessing various parameters such as socio-economic costs and energy efficiency improvements in the national energy systems. The results demonstrate the economically feasible levels of heat savings and heat production for various European countries, highlighting differences in their national conditions and energy systems. The findings in this paper indicate that overinvestments in heat savings can be avoided by saving heat until a level around 30–50% of projected heat demands and supplying the remaining heat demand with sustainable heat sources.

Keywords: Heat savings; Heat supply; Energy efficiency; Renewable energy; National energy systems; Levelised costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216308064
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:115:y:2016:i:p3:p:1663-1671

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.06.033

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().