Assessing the changes required in the energy infrastructure with regard to the heating transition

Abstract

In the Netherlands, almost half of the energy supplied to households is used for space heating. Since natural gas supplies heating fuel to almost 95% of residential buildings Dutch municipalities have to investigate the possibilities of diversifying their heating infrastructure in order to comply with government environmental goals. Possible heating alternatives included in this study are; biogas, district heating and all-electric. In this thesis, a geospatial model was constructed to analyse the energy demand of the city of Leiden and its energy infrastructure. By combining various governmental datasets in Python and GeoPandas an analysis on the city scale is possible. The main focus of the thesis is material demand for each heating alternative and the associated environmental impact of those materials. The current heating system of natural gas scores lowest on total material demand and embedded carbon. Of the investigated alternatives the district heating scenario has most materials embedded into the infrastructure and also the highest carbon footprint. The all-electric scenario completely replaces heating infrastructure by only utilising electricity for heating. This results in a significant system change with average material consumption. However, the all-electric scenario scores highest for demand in REE’s. A combination of heat pumps and biogas resulted in the lowest material consumption of the researched alternatives. This scenario combines the relatively simple conversion to biogas for older houses with the most efficient heating utilising heat pumps for new houses. The major drawback for this scenario would be the sourcing of biomass required for biogas production.
In terms of embedded CO2 the sustainable heating alternatives proposed in this thesis score higher than the current system. However, the embedded carbon of the building materials would be compensated for in the first year if use-phase emissions are taken into account. The emissions associated with the construction of the supporting energy infrastructure were found to be significantly smaller compared to the use-phase emissions. Together with factors such as heat source availability, investment costs and social acceptance of the heating alternatives municipalities have to decide which heating alternative has its preference.