alt Hacker NewsIn the nordics we love heat-pumps! Something like 70% of houses are heated by heat-pumps, and 90% of apartment buildings are heated by district heating and that is often generated by huge heatpumps.
Apparently 95% of new heating installations in Swedish houses are heat-pumps these days: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1...
Heatpumps have been heating nordic homes for decades. Even in the countryside where many houses have small woodland attached, people I know have moved to heatpumps for convenience and because its affordable.
PS: shoutout to to the JRC, found their reports when doing a super quick dig for stats. Those reports were super easy to read :D
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As a German, I find the popularity of heat pumps in the nordics especially amusing. In Germany heat pumps were an incredibly political topic and people were pushed by some media outlets to really hate heat pumps. One recurring topic was that heat pumps can‘t work at German temperatures.
> Something like 70% of houses are heated by heat-pumps
To me, living in US Northeast, this is astounding. I've read heat pumps lose efficacy below 25F. My family would never forgive me if I made our house cold. But then I see 70% of the Nordics's house are "warm enough", or dealing colder than room temperature houses.
I've asked half-dozen contractors and HVAC people in my area, and none of them have recommended a heat pump. But, I'm just as suspicious of their motives as I am of the science and environmental populizers on YouTube.
From the PDF at your link:
"Heat pumps are more efficient than gas boilers and become competitive when the electricity price is lower than around three times the gas or oil price"
Sweden seems to have quite high domestic gas rates (highest in EU I think?), around £0.18/kWh, with electricity at £0.23/kWh so I can definitely understand the adoption of heat pumps with gas being so high.
In the UK we have lower heat pump adoption, which could largely be explained by gas being ~£0.06/kWh (and electricity is ~£0.27/kWh). There is also the barrier that many houses are draughty and would require significant expensive upgrades
Sign of a rich and very developed country.
A lot of buildings in Austrian cities are still heated by burning oil or wood and the whole city smells like a bonfire.
Probably gonna have my lifespan shortened by at least a decade from all that fossil fuel pollution, but at least we banned that dirty nuclear from killing us.
Interesting that district heating is so popular there.
IIRC in the Netherlands people don't like it, because it because it means that there is a single company supplying my heat, with