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A bottom-up estimation of the heating and cooling demand in European industry

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Abstract

Energy balances are usually aggregated at the level of subsector and energy carrier. While heating and cooling accounts for half the energy demand of the European Union’s 28 member states plus Norway, Switzerland and Iceland (EU28 + 3), currently, there are no end-use balances that match Eurostat’s energy balance for the industrial sector. Here, we present a methodology to disaggregate Eurostat’s energy balance for the industrial sector. Doing so, we add the dimensions of temperature level and end-use. The results show that, although a similar distribution of energy use by temperature level can be observed, there are considerable differences among individual countries. These differences are mainly caused by the countries’ heterogeneous economic structures, highlighting that approaches on a process level yield more differentiated results than those based on subsectors only. We calculate the final heating demand of the EU28 + 3 for industrial processes in 2012 to be 1035, 706 and 228 TWh at the respective temperature levels > 500 °C (e.g. iron and steel production), 100–500 °C (e.g. steam use in chemical industry) and < 100 °C (e.g. food industry); 346 TWh is needed for space heating. In addition, 86 TWh is calculated for the industrial process cooling demand for electricity in EU28 + 3. We estimate additional 12 TWh of electricity demand for industrial space cooling. The results presented here have contributed to policy discussions in the EU (European Commision 2016), and we expect the additional level of detail to be relevant when designing policies regarding fuel dependency, fuel switching and specific technologies (e.g. low-temperature heat applications).

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Notes

  1. In the EU project ‘Mapping and analyses of the current and future (2020–2030) heating/cooling fuel deployment (fossil/renewables)’ (Fraunhofer ISI, Fraunhofer ISE, TU Wien, TEP Energy, IREES, Observer 2016), a comprehensive analysis has been carried out of the availability of end-use balances in the EU28 + 3, including the residential and tertiary sector as well.

  2. The illustration shows model results for heating and cooling demand presented at the aggregation level also available in energy balances. The actual energy balances include additional electricity for non-heating/cooling uses.

  3. The analysis presented here only comprises one base year, so there is no temporal dimension included. When used in scenario analysis, both the industrial production (IP p, c ) and the energy carrier shares (ShareEC s, ec, c ) may change each year.

  4. It may be unclear, for example, whether this cooling is carried out actively (with additional energy demand or waste heat use) or passively.

  5. The share of energy demand used for heating and cooling (ShareH/C) translates the total energy demand given by the SEC into process heat demand.

  6. The analysis presented here only comprises one base year, so there is no temporal dimension included. When used in scenario analysis, both the employment data (EMP c, s ) and the specific energy demand of the buildings (SEC c, b ) may change each year.

  7. See supplementary data for values.

  8. See supplementary data for values.

  9. See supplementary data for values and details on data origin.

  10. For electrolysis, we included shares of electricity use as process heat, depending on the specific process description. Since, for example, electrolysis in the primary production of aluminium in the Hall–Héroult process requires a temperature of around 950 °C, we assign approx. 2.5-GJ/t electricity use as process heat. While the theoretical minimum would be approx. 0.8 GJ/t, special conditions of the process induce heat losses (US Department of Energy 2008; Nowicki and Gosselin 2012). The distinction between process heat in our definition and process-specific electricity use is therefore not trivial.

  11. Of the 25 processes presented, the ten biggest include eight processes that mainly or exclusively use high-temperature heat above 500 °C.

  12. For example, for 2015, Eurostat’s energy balances (Eurostat 2016b) show 46 ktoe (0.53 TWh) industrial energy demand for Malta, with 36 ktoe (0.42 TWh) of electricity. This proportion is very different from the ones we observe in other economies. The model is not well suited to deal with this, whether the cause is a real difference in economies or a statistical issue.

  13. The general distribution of energy carriers can already be derived from Eurostat (2016b). The main difference in these results is that they refer to heating and cooling instead of total energy demand. This does, however, mainly affect electricity, as fuels are assumed to be used for heating uses only.

  14. This means that countries’ and subsectors’ BU-coverage is weighted by the final energy demand (FED) of the respective aggregated dimension: Countries with low FED contribute less to BU-coverage in Fig. 4; subsectors with low FED contribute less to BU-coverage in Fig. 6.

  15. Smaller countries tend to have a less complete process portfolio. This has the effect of enhancing any errors in the assumptions about processes that do exist. Additionally, outliers of specific energy consumption are accorded higher weight.

  16. Note that Ireland (5) and Estonia (10) have very poor BU-coverage in Fig. 15, indicating inconsistency between the energy balance and production statistics.

  17. The German end-use balance 2012 is not a suitable candidate for comparison as it was compiled with the support of the same model we use here.

  18. Naegler et al. (2015) claim to match the energy balance, too.

  19. Patterson (1996) categorises ‘persistent methodological problems’: value judgements (e.g. what is useful energy), energy quality (e.g. enthalpy vs. exergy), boundaries (e.g. which input is considered to enter the energy balance and in what quality and state?), joint production (e.g. what is the main product of a process with multiple outputs and how to assign its energy use; combined heat and power production is the most popular example) and technical/gross efficiency.

  20. For example, by providing a more detailed picture of waste heat potentials, the use of temperature-dependent technologies like heat pumps and solar thermal systems, or by estimating the effect of differences in industrial structure on heating demand (via a country comparison).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of the team involved in the ‘Mapping Heat’ project (Fraunhofer ISI, Fraunhofer ISE, TU Wien, TEP Energy, IREES, Observer 2016), Matthias Reuter, who gathered information on European energy and end-use balances, Andrea Herbst, who maintains and updates our database of industrial production and Felix Reitze for his support with process cooling. We would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and patience.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Breslauer Straße 48, 76139, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Matthias Rehfeldt & Tobias Fleiter

  2. Institute for Resource Efficiency and Energy Strategies IREES, Schönfeldstraße 8, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Felipe Toro

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  1. Matthias Rehfeldt
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  2. Tobias Fleiter
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  3. Felipe Toro
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Correspondence to Matthias Rehfeldt.

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Rehfeldt, M., Fleiter, T. & Toro, F. A bottom-up estimation of the heating and cooling demand in European industry. Energy Efficiency 11, 1057–1082 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-017-9571-y

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