ECEEE SUMMER STUDY PROCEEDINGS 1385 Heat pumps and global residential heating Tina Fawcett, Nick Eyre & Russell Layberry Environmental Change Institute Oxford University Centre for the Environment South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3QY UK tina.fawcett@eci.ox.ac.uk nick.eyre@eci.ox.ac.uk russell.layberry@eci.ox.ac.uk Keywords heat pump, efficiency, residential, modelling, peak savings Abstract Electrification is seen as an important global contributor to mitigation of climate change, because low carbon electricity can, in theory, replace current fossil fuel use in buildings and surface transport. Heat pumps are the key technology for de- livering electrification of heating. is paper investigates how heat pump adoption in the residential sector would affect total and peak electricity demand globally and for individual coun- tries. It also analyses the role of improving efficiency in reduc- ing heating energy demand. A model of global heating energy use has been developed. is geographical model uses historical population-weighted temperature data, and assumptions about heating energy use and the efficiency of heat pumps to give peak instantaneous de- mand, calculated at three-hourly time steps. Results show that heating energy need is dominated globally by China, which is responsible for almost 40 % of the total. For the UK, 100 % adoption of heat pumps, all other things being equal, would in- crease national electricity demand by 25 %, and peak electricity demand by 65 %. e peak: mean heating ratio is 4.1 and would change from the current total electricity peak: mean ratio from 1.58 to 2.11. Globally, 100 % heat pump adoption would require 11 % of current world electricity use and increase peak demand by 65 %. is peak electricity capacity is unlikely to be delivered, given the huge costs entailed. Options for reducing the peak: mean ratio, including inter- national interconnection, and using back-up heating systems at times of extreme cold, have been modelled. e model is then used to look at how results would change with future temperatures, and with energy service demand. In particular, scenarios with a much more insulated building stock are ex- plored – highlighting the importance of efficiency in enabling a scenario with high heat pump uptake. us the modelling results are linked with real world concerns and policy options, to deliver a more sophisticated understanding of the challenges of mass heat pump adoption. Introduction Electrification is seen as an important global contributor to mitigation of climate change, because low carbon electricity can, in theory, replace current fossil fuel use in buildings and surface transport. On the supply side, strategies for low carbon emissions by 2050 typically focus on the expansion of renew- able and/or nuclear energy along with carbon capture and stor- age for fossil fuel electricity production. is is accompanied by electrifying both the heat and transport sectors as much as possible, requiring the provision of a charging network for vehicles, installation of new heating systems in buildings, and many other technical, economic and social changes. Residen- tial heating is an important sector in this transformation as it accounts for a significant proportion of national energy use in countries with cold winters. In the UK 19 % of delivered energy in 2012 was used for residential heating (based on Palmer and Cooper, 2013). In the EU-28 residential heating accounts for 17.5 % of total delivered energy (Lapillonne and Pollier, 2014). Electrification in the residential sector is expected to be de- livered via heat pumps. Heat pumps take low temperature heat from the environment and turn it into higher temperature heat by using electrical energy. An efficient heat pump will have a seasonal performance factor of 3 or above, meaning that annu- Contents Keywords Authors