Heating

This page is about heating homes and other buildings.

Status quo

• 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.
• Heating uses far more energy than lights, computers, and other electricity usage at home, typically.

How to get fresh air in the winter without losing too much heat

• Instead of opening the window just a crack, open all the windows (and doors if possible) for a short amount of time. Flush out the air, and then close everything fully. 💬 discussion TO DO: maybe add a note explaining why this is more efficient

Longer term solutions

• Install a ventilation system that has a heat exchangerA heat exchanger is a special component that pre-warms the fresh winter air, using the old indoor air. It can save a lot of energy.^{[QUANTIFICATION needed]} ? Could be very expensive tho. And what if the environmental footprint of all the renovations is higher than the heat it saves?
  • Maybe we could invent something easier & cheaper? See Talk: Portable heat exchanger

Discussions

• Insulate existing buildings - sustainability questions
• Can rooftop solar alone provide enough heating? - case studies

Heating types - comparison

For electricity generated by fossil fuels, electric heating tends to have a worse carbon footprint than burning fossil fuels directly (such as in a natural gas furnace). This is because of the losses in the power plant and power lines. 💬 discussion TO DO: 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.

Heat pumps can mitigate some of that inefficiency, but maybe not well enough. Natural gas furnaces might still be the better option, unless the local power grid is mostly renewables or nuclear. 💬 discussion TO DO: fill in a table of relative carbon emissions by type, typical cases

See also

• Cooling
• Water heating
• Wasted electricity is the same as electric heating