Talk:Renewable heat

heat pump
I added electricity and made "heat pump" a subheading of that user:GliderMaven with [| this edit] then moved the electricity section under the heat pump section with the comment "electricity is not a form of heating, nor are heat pumps necessarily powered by electricity". There seems to be some reluctance here to acknowledge that there are millions of heat pumps that use electricity to move heat, even though "electric" is mentioned 20 times in the heat pump article, and no other power source is. I don't disagree that it's possible to power a heat pump some other way, just that now they are electric and that isn't noted.

The efficiency aspect of heat pumps might be great, but that doesn't make them "renewable", they are working just as well with coal powered electricity. I also think that Clothes_dryer don't belong in this article, even though they are efficient and contribute to space heating. I'd be happy with the whole heat pump section being moved to Sustainable_energy, comments? Dougmcdonell (talk) 17:36, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * This article is about renewable heat, not about non renewable heat such as coal powered equipment. The fact that a renewable heat technology can also be used in the context of non renewable energy, powered by coal, doesn't count either way, it's irrelevant. The point is that heat pumps *are* considered a renewable heat technology. Heat pumps exist that are thermally powered and could be powered by fossil or solar heat, or biofuels.GliderMaven (talk) 18:15, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

The heat pump predates "renewable technology", they became popular because they're efficient, they are not inherently renewable or coal powered. The most common power source for heat pumps is coal, yet you say "not about non renewable heat such as coal powered equipment". Having 10 examples that aren't electrically powered is not notable when millions are, yet you thought is was important to separate heat pumps from renewable electricity. How about add "heat pumps *are* considered a renewable heat technology" to the heat pump article and see if anyone agrees with your statement. Dougmcdonell (talk) 17:45, 31 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Geothermal energy also far, far predates any modern concept at all of renewable technology. It doesn't matter when the technology was invented, what matters is whether it is considered useful in terms of renewable heat, which after all is the topic of the article.GliderMaven (talk) 23:27, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks GliderMaven I'm interested in clearing up what matters here. See if you agree on this - "renewable sources including burning biomass and its air pollution" which all goes to "the grid" and is actually all kids of different grids, with all kinds of sources, some owned publicly and some owned privately. This mishmash of electricity then ends up at a home or business, where there all all kinds of heat items electric stoves, solar hot water systems, clothes dryers, lighting and they all operate at different inefficiencies. I think we could agree up to this point.

Then we take a house with a natural gas furnace, and switch it to an electric heat pump, it is the most popular model on the market, it is air sourced to save on installation costs and has a COP of 1.9 - It is twice the efficiency of a restive heater. It costs 10 times as much as a biofuel heater, and takes 20% more biofuel to supply its electricity than the heater would have used. Since the old system was natural gas, then we just added a big load that the grid didn't have before, need a bigger grid. Maybe individual circumstances make a heat pump a great idea, maybe the people who buy them are also using some renewable electricity (30% is a common target, leaving 70% dirty) but maybe biomass is cheaper, maybe expand the solar hot water, how about a more efficient clothes dryer (not 3000 watts blowing room air outside). Sometimes a heat pump is the best way to reduce the future burden on renewables, and in some circumstances consumes more dirty electricity than renewable electricity and puts too much money into expanding the grid when it's better invested solar or biomass. Oh and the natural gas that got displaced by the heat pump, it will get used somewhere else. Sometimes heat pumps work against renewables. Thoughts? Dougmcdonell (talk) 05:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Heat pumps are generally fitted in conjunction with much better insulation, which often pays for itself in the long run anyway. But it means you don't need such a big boiler; and so running costs are lower and the boiler cost is usually small compared to running cost anyway. The heat pump is often essentially an air conditioning system, and they're not that expensive. And I don't agree with the idea that the natural gas will get used somewhere else, it has to be actively produced, and if the market demand goes down, they can reduce the price, but I bet it's a relatively inelastic market. There's also a problem of scale with biofuels; the amount of land you need to grow biofuels is absolutely enormous; biofuel production is about 1% efficient with regards solar energy, whereas solar panels are 20%, so solar panels only need 1/20 of the land area, and wind turbines actually only take a quite small amount of land at the base, usually a wind farm is actually also a real farm. Some biofuels may be made from waste streams from food production, but I doubt it's something you could heat a whole country on.GliderMaven (talk) 15:27, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

In REN21's 2014 report, renewables contributed 19% to supply global energy consumption. Divided as 9% coming from burning biomass, 4.2% as heat energy (non-biomass), 3.8% hydro electricity and 2% as electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass thermal power plants. So currently biomass is 450% the size of wind, solar and geothermal. Before WWII the whole world heated with biomass & coal. Dougmcdonell (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Sure, but biomass and wind/solar/hydro are not really directly comparable since the latter produce electricity directly. Electricity gives a low entropy source of energy which can be used much more efficiently. You need to take one third of the biomass energy to get the equivalent in electrical terms; and both wind and solar are growing extremely quickly and are virtually certain to eclipse biomass.GliderMaven (talk) 16:25, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

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