This page is about heating homes and other buildings.
Status quo
Globally, most heating is done using fossil fuels: 💬 discussion TODO: Add a stat about what percent of fossil fuels are used for heating indoor air (or maybe instead, what percent of the world's carbon emissions are from heating indoor air). Also show how it compares to cooling and other electricity use.
- Burning natural gas or petroleum oil
- Electric heaters, and most of the world's electricity comes from coal or gas power plants.
Discussions
Comparison
For electricity generated by fossil fuels,
electric heating tends to have a worse carbon footprint than burning fossil fuels directly.
This is because of the losses in
power plants and power lines.
💬 discussion TODO: Also mention some renewables scenarios where, for example, there's hydropower but at a limited capacity: Whenever you use more electricity, less hydropower can be exported elsewhere, and so more fossil fuels must be used for someone else's electricity. (...)( Note: There are other cases where this isn't true - especially with wind and solar without enough energy storage. ) If all of this sounds too complicated, it doesn't have to be. Saving energy is just generally a good thing, basically.
| Typical case
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Relative carbon emissions iDoes not include lifecycle emissions. Only fuel or electricity is counted in this table.
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| Natural gas furnace
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| Oil burner
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Electric heat pump, 💬 discussion Need to decide what temperature difference we're talking about, and specify it somewhere.
natural gas power plant
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Electric heat pump,
coal power plant
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Electric space heater,
natural gas power plant
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Electric space heater,
coal power plant
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Research needed: Let's do some estimates and help fill in this table. Join the discussion.
See also