Page 64 - European Energy Innovation - Summer 2017 publication

64 Summer 2017 European Energy Innovation

HEATING AND COOLING

The keys to decarbonising

Europe’s heating and cooling

By Thomas Nowak, Secretary-General of the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) www.ehpa.org

5 factors are holding back the ice and quickly moved to electricity, working system – out of sight, out of
energy transition to a zero using the refrigerant cycle. Important mind. On commercial levels and in
emissions Europe by 2050, in everybody’s daily lives, heating industrial processes, the same applies
writes Thomas Nowak. and cooling technology is hidden in on a much larger scale. Functionality
basements and on rooftops connected and reliability have too often been
The way we use energy in our via pipes and tubes to radiators, floor prioritized over innovation: why change
society needs to change if we heating systems or ceiling boxes. a running system? Heating and cooling
want to keep global warming is not characterized by short innovation
well below 2°C, as stipulated A good heating/cooling system is a cycles and many systems are operated
at COP21 in Paris. This transition needs
to include decision-makers on all levels Decarb Heat Forum | 11-12 May 2017 in Brussels | Acting
and must above all include citizens. together to decarbonise Europe

A world without fossil fuels
seems daunting, but the energy
transformation is already happening:
it’s entering people’s psyches,
production cost is going down, and it’s
‘cleaning out’ our grids: in 2016, 86%
of the new capacity built across Europe
came from renewables, that’s 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

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