European policymakers and researchers alike are putting their collective minds to the challenge of reducing the energy produced by cooling and heating in buildings. New research funding comes in response to new momentum for efficiency improvement from the European Commission whose Energy Union framework policy aims to transform both energy supply and consumption.
It also comes with an acknowledgement from the EC that the specifics of climate control have been somewhat overlooked in the legislative drive to change the supply mix of energy.
The drive also has a human face in the person of Maros Sefcovic, vice president of the European Commission, who has been put in charge of steering the Energy Union. His theme is that Europe "can do much better" at improving efficiency, given that at least 40 percent of the region's energy goes to heating and cooling.
Sefcovic last week showed preview copies of several heating and cooling "issue papers" to the Reuters news agency ahead of a planned updating of EU energy legislation in the New Year. The strategic focus is now more slanted toward energy reduction in the heating and cooling, homing in on areas such as insulation, district heat networks and renewables.
Renewable energy already accounts for 26 percent of electricity production in the EU but just 16.4 percent of heating and cooling, he told Reuters — suggesting there is plenty of room for improvement.
Among the key facts in the papers were the Commission's estimates of cooling and heating's contribution. It said fossil fuels dominate heat supply, accounting for around 63 percent of end use in buildings, while over 90 percent of heating and hot water is produced from individual heating appliances, versus district heating's current 9 percent.
Cooling only currently accounts for around 1 percent of final energy in the residential sector, but its present 9 percent in the commercial sector, is expected to see "exponential growth." Meanwhile, the sheer diversity of the installed equipment base is demonstrated by the fact that condensing boilers make up 56 percent of the U.K. installed heating and cooling base, whereas in Sweden heat pumps are in the majority, accounting for 46 percent.
The Commission estimates half of Europe's heat demand is in areas where population density is high enough for district heating infrastructure, which could cover as much as 40-70 percent of EU heat demand, while being a more efficient option than alternative methods. Combined heat and power is another key element of the mix. In less dense areas, Sefcovic says heat pumps are one of the most promising options for energy savings for individual houses.
Interestingly, the new focus on reduction rather than supply has been greeted with alarm by European energy suppliers, who feel their business models will be significantly disrupted. Or in simple terms, reduced energy on a wide scale will eat into their supply forecasts and thus margins.
Reuters notes a switch to district heating would be a huge change for most of Western Europe, where households mainly rely on individual boilers for their space heating and hot water. At a minimum, it would require a great deal of coordination among local authorities, along with an element of disruption for the building owners, as the networks' pipework is installed.
At the same time, some already-well-established municipal heating networks — of which there are hundreds in Europe — have argued that the "macro-izing" of district heating technology would not be helpful economically or environmentally.
The next few weeks are expected to see a fevered lobbying of the Commission by interest groups and individual governments, with the supply side keen to put its perspective across, from individual utility companies to the nuclear lobby.
But the new mood for heating and cooling efficiency has spelled good news for research. In the last month alone, we have seen two diverse projects receive funding for building energy reduction.
One the one hand, BuildHEAT is a 7 million euro research project, funded by the EU's innovation program Horizon 2020, which has the ambitious aim of reducing fuel consumption in apartment buildings by up to 80 percent. On the other, CryoHub is seeking to use cooling processes from industrial buildings to store energy by liquefying the exhaust air.
BuildHEAT has a grand scope with 18 members from academia and industry working for the next four years on "intelligent climate control" to improve efficiency in individual apartments. Significantly, it will be aimed at retrofit, rather than new-build projects. The project will focus initially on a "real world" installation of three apartment buildings, each comprising 50-80 flats, in Italy, Spain and the U.K., testing both the technology of heating and cooling, and financing models for the consumers.
Among the technology options are:
- integrated heating, cooling, ventilation and domestic hot water units
- intelligent photovoltaic systems
- insulation options for the building fabric
- heat pumps
- associated technology such as controls and microgeneration, to reduce the operating costs of the HVAC
The potential is undeniably large — the project believes space heating consumption in the residential sector in Europe is around 2,300 terawatt hours per year (TWh/yr). Domestic hot water is around 500 TWh/yr, while cooling consumption is less than 100 TWh/yr.
"The construction sector offers unique opportunities to decarbonize the European economy," the project partners say. "However, as the replacement rate of the existing stock is very small (1-1.5 percent per year), acceleration is needed. On top of this, the reorganization of the sector poses tremendous challenges due to its extreme fragmentation: more than 50 percent of the residential buildings are owned by private, single owners."
Thus, BuildHEAT is focusing firmly on retrofit options that can be applied to the individual apartments, it says.
Significantly, the project has a social aim, which addresses the preponderance of smaller firms in the construction supply chain. BuildHEAT says that by involving them from the beginning of the project, they can help educate smaller firms in the most innovative solutions — knowledge that they may not come across from conventional supply chain information channels.
The CryoHub project is a pan-European project worth 7 million euros over three and a half years. It is based on the principle of cryogenic energy storage (CES) whereby air is converted into a liquid at times when electricity is cheap, then placed in a storage vessel. When required, the liquid is converted back to a gas, by applying heat to it, thereby producing enough of an increase in volume and pressure to power a turbine. This can generate electricity, which can then be supplied back to the grid.
The spinoff benefit is that CryoHub will investigate the potential for CES to shift the energy used by the processing plants to times when demand is much lower. The researchers estimate that if the technology were applied to just 10 percent of the refrigerated warehouses and food factories in Europe, it could save 9 million tonnes CO2e per year.
According to Professor Judith Evans of London South Bank University, one of the partners, the technology can be used to restore electricity to the grid when energy demand is predicted to outstrip supply.
"CES is therefore a great complement to renewable energy sources, as it effectively safeguards against any periods of intermittent supply and helps to stabilise the energy grid," Evans said.
CryoHub hopes to improve CES efficiency by integrating it with the cooling and heating facilities found in industrial refrigeration warehouses and food processing plants to provide sufficient CES efficiency gains to be made to make the technology viable in the near future.
"With Europe committed to generating 20 percent of its required energy from renewable sources in 2020, it's vital that renewable energy sources are fully and properly integrated with industry so that supply from the grid can continue to meet demand," Evans said. "Only through advances in technology will this be achievable, so CryoHub will be an important project in helping Europe to move towards a low-carbon economy."
