Gas boilers power millions of homes. But what can replace them in a greener future?

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Here’s what you need to know.

Solar panels on the roof: These are particularly good for heating water. With the right support, residents can store energy on their own and sell unused electricity back to the national grid, but subsidies and incentives vary from country to country, while up-front costs can be higher. higher than for conventional water heating systems. Globally, home solar power only satisfied 2.1% of the heat demand of space and water in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Green hydrogen: This fuel has also been touted as a clean alternative as it can be derived from sources like water, rather than fossil fuels, and is produced with renewable energy. But the fuel is still in the development stage, and some experts say using solar or wind power to produce another fuel right now is a waste of valuable renewables. Green hydrogen is widely considered suitable for heavy industry and large vehicles, such as airplanes and ships.

Heat pumps : These are becoming a popular alternative. There are two main types – air source heat pumps, which extract heat from the air, and ground source heat pumps, which extract heat from the ground – and both work essentially like the reverse of a refrigerator.

An air source heat pump is installed in a house built in the 1930s in Folkestone, England on September 20, 2021.
Between 2007 and the end of 2020, nearly 15 million heat pump units were installed in the 21 European countries for which it has data, said the European Association of Heat Pumps (EHPA). Of these, 1.6 million were installed last year, with Germany, France and Italy accounting for almost half of those sales.
The UK is lagging behind, however, according to analysis of the latest EHPA data by environmental campaign group Greenpeace, released earlier this month. Last year, the UK installed more than five times fewer heat pumps than Lithuania, more than 30 times fewer than Estonia and 60 times fewer heat pumps than Norway, according to the analysis by Greenpeace.

“If the government is to have any chance of catching up, it needs the right strategy and enough money to clean our homes on a large scale. This means substantial subsidies for heat pump installations, especially for the poorest families, by removing VAT on green household technologies. and a phase-out of gas boilers early in the next decade, ”said Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace UK.

The UK government is due to outline its plans to reduce carbon emissions from homes in a policy document in the coming weeks ahead of the COP26 summit.

Gas boilers provide heat and hot water to millions of homes around the world.
The United States is rushing to install heat pumps in new homes. According to the IEA, the share of heat pump sales for new buildings exceeds 40% for single-family dwellings and is around 50% for new multi-family buildings. Ground source heat pumps are more common in the United States than anywhere else – accounting for more than half of 400,000 annual sales – with sales boosted by a 30% federal tax credit in recent years, said the ‘OUCH.
Globally, nearly 20 million homes bought heat pumps in 2019, up from 14 million in 2010, according to the IEA. Most of that growth comes from higher sales of reversible units that can also provide air conditioning, he said, also reflecting an increased need for cooling.

Despite this growth, heat pumps still cover less than 5% of global heating needs in buildings, according to the IEA.

Gas is getting expensive, but is it making the climate crisis worse?

While some countries, like the UK, celebrate their phase-out of coal, they use more gas, but natural gas is not a low-emission fuel either.

It’s more efficient than coal and emits less carbon dioxide when burned, but it’s mostly made up of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that can escape into the atmosphere from abandoned pipelines and wells. and cause significant warming. The UN climate change report released in August underscored the urgent need to control methane emissions.

Methane has more than 80 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide and leaks from active and abandoned gas wells, as well as other sources. Its atmospheric concentrations have increased since the mid-1980s, and more rapidly over the past decade.

The United States and the European Union have agreed to reduce methane levels by 30% by the end of the decade and are mobilizing other countries to do the same.

Last year, the European Union and the United Kingdom used more renewable energy than fossil fuels to generate electricity. But at the same time, the US and UK both depend on gas for around 40% of their electricity.
The European Union is a little less dependent. Natural gas accounts for 32% of household energy consumption in the block of 27 countries, more than electricity powered by fossil fuels (25%), renewable energies (20%) and petroleum products (12%) , according to EU figures for 2019. But it is growing and investing heavily in gas.
Scientists say this invisible gas could seal our fate on climate change

An issue affecting the urgency with which people view the need to move away from natural gas can be as simple as its name.

A study by the Yale Climate Change Communication Program, released this month, found that calling it “natural” gas was influencing public perception. While feelings about “natural gas” were positive among the 2,931 American adults surveyed, feelings about “natural methane gas” were neutral and feelings about “methane gas” and “methane” were negative. .

“The results suggest that climate communicators should describe natural gas using the terms ‘methane gas’ or ‘methane’, which is the main component of this energy source,” the researchers concluded.

The IEA has said that no new fossil-fueled boilers should be sold globally from 2025 if the world is to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, where the amount of emissions n is not greater than that extracted from the atmosphere.

According to its roadmap for the energy sector, released in May, gas boiler sales are expected to fall by more than 40% from current levels by 2030 and 90% by 2050.

It’s going to require a huge transformation. As many countries wean themselves off coal – which is typically the biggest emitter of all widely used fossil fuels – they are turning to natural gas as a “bridging fuel” during the transition to renewables playing a larger role. in the energy mix.

Over 80% of UK households are connected to town gas, and about half in the US use natural gas for home and water heating.

Why are these alternatives so difficult to access?

People don’t necessarily have that much power over the energy sources in their homes, unless they are wealthy enough. It also depends on where you live – some countries have done more than others to help households move away from gas.

Also, if you are in an apartment building, like many people, you may have even less of a say.

The UK government has announced plans to ban gas boilers in new homes from 2025, with low-carbon heating systems to be installed in their place. It also intends to stop the sale of new gas boilers from 2035.

Shock sticker for home heating: the cost of natural gas is up 180%

But heat pumps are still expensive, and their installation often also requires broader changes to the interior of the property, said Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, senior sustainability research associate at Lancaster University in the UK. In addition to replacing their individual gas boilers, people may need to install larger radiators and underfloor heating to make sure their home is warm enough.

Ground source heat pumps require space to either bury a pipe in a loop under a garden or dig a deep borehole. This isn’t always realistic in urban areas, where air source heat pumps – which look a bit like air conditioning units – are a better option. “They don’t require as much space, but they’re not as efficient,” Ellsworth-Krebs told CNN.

The country’s many older, drafty homes also present a barrier, she said, as heat pumps produce an inferior, constant form of heating that works best with a tight building fabric.

The UK government has been accused of doing an about-face in its policies on solar panels and heat pumps, with discounts that were introduced and then withdrawn. Its flagship “Green Homes Grant” – which was supposed to help hundreds of thousands of households improve their insulation and install low-carbon heaters like heat pumps – was scrapped in March after just six months.

A view of the Avedore power station in Denmark, which provides district heating to the Copenhagen metropolitan area.
The EU presented ambitious plans in its Green Deal to help it achieve a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, from 1990 levels. Dependence on fossil fuels varies widely between its 27 member states and some, especially poorer countries, may find it more difficult to move their populations away from them for home heating and to renovate old building stock.
Ellsworth-Krebs believes the solution could be found in localized options, such as district heating systems, rather than relying on individual households to switch to low-carbon alternatives. District heating systems work by distributing heat from waste combustion or geothermal activity, for example, through insulated pipes to homes in a city or community.

“I think it shouldn’t be up to you as the owner or owner to make a lot of these big investments,” she said.

CNN’s Angela Dewan contributed to this report.

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