ELECTRIFICATION OF SPACE HEATING District heating is often the intelligent solution
By Lars Gullev, Senior Consultant, VEKS
Hanne Kortegaard Støchkel, Researcher and Project Development Manager, DBDH
Jesper Koch, Head of Analysis, Grøn Energi
In the quest for a sustainable future, district heating emerges as a powerful ally to wind power, fostering efficient sector integration. As society seeks cost-effective green conversions for the heating sector, district heating stands out as the optimal driver, surpassing individual electricity-based solutions. District heating offers flexibility and storage capabilities on both seasonal and daily scales, benefiting power and heating systems. Its true strength lies not in isolated components like heat pumps or electric boilers but in the seamless integration of infrastructure, diverse heat sources, and intelligent operations.
Today, in the EU, 33-40% of our total energy consumption is used to heat our buildings and produce domestic hot water. In 2021, more than 75% of this energy consumption was based on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. This situation is not sustainable, so the energy consumption for space heating must be reduced, and fossil fuel use must be converted to renewable energy. Electrification is often mentioned as the solution, but it is not so simple if it must be done intelligently simultaneously. Here, district heating often will be the intelligent solution compared to the individual solutions. Goodbye to silo thinking and hello to system integration The simple solution can often be the biggest obstacle to the intelligent solution: with a sole focus on making the buildings more energy efficient, the consequence is that a more sustainable energy supply for space heating is not ensured.
If the focus is solely on electrifying space heating, the opportunity to utilize large amounts of renewable energy and surplus heat from industry and data centres is lost. At the same time, there is an eminent risk of investing too much in expanding the power grid and increasing power production capacity. Massive expansion of power production capacity based on wind and solar requires system integration between the power system and district heating. That way, inexpensive excess power production can be
cheaply stored in the district heating system. It is, therefore, necessary to leave the historical vertical silo way of thinking, where energy sectors are
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