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ABSTRACT: During the last decades, the effects of global warming have become apparent also in Europe, causing relevant impacts in many sectors. Under projected future global warming, such a tendency can be expected to persist until the end of this century and beyond. Identifying which climate‐related impacts are likely to increase, and by how much, is an important element of any effective strategy for managing future climate risks. This study investigates whether energy demand for cooling and heating buildings can be expected to increase or decrease under climate change. Two indicators of weather‐related energy consumption for heating and cooling buildings are considered: heating degree‐days (HDD) and cooling degree‐days (CDD). The evolution of these indicators has been analysed based on 11 high‐resolution bias‐adjusted EURO‐CORDEX simulations for two emission representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Both indicators have been validated over the period 1981–2010 using an independent data set that contains more than 4000 station data, showing very high correlation over most of Europe. Trends of HDD and CDD from 1981 to 2100, together with their uncertainties, are analysed. For both RCPs, all simulations project a significant decrease for HDD, especially over Scandinavia and European Russia, and an increase of CDD which peaks over the Mediterranean region and the Balkans. Overall, degree‐day trends do not show remarkable differences if population weighting is applied. If a constant population scenario is considered, the decrease in HDD will outbalance the increase in CDD in the 21st century over most of Europe. Thus the related energy demand (expressed as Energy Degree‐days, EDD) is expected to decrease. If, however, population projections over the 21st century are included in the calculations, it is shown that despite the persisting warming, EDD will increase over northern Europe, the Baltic countries, Great Britain, Ireland, Benelux, the Alps, Spain, and Cyprus, resulting in an overall increase in EDD over Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the electricity, heating, and cooling sectors at national level for various European countries. Annual energy demands are compared for all 28 EU countries, while peak hourly demands are compared for four countries that vary significantly. The results indicate that the heat demand is currently the largest of the three demand types considered in terms of both annual and peak demands: it is the largest annual demand in 25 of the 28 EU countries, and it represents the largest peak demand in all four countries analysed. Electricity, heating, and cooling demands are all likely to change significantly in the future with increasing electrification, energy efficiency (e.g. building insulation), and improved comfort (especially for cooling). Some extreme scenarios are presented here to quantify the potential impact of these changes on the electricity sector, with results revealing that the demand for electricity could double compared to today, depending on how these changes occur. Considering the scale of additional electricity required to electrify future heating and cooling demands, heat pumps should be prioritised over electric heating and other alternatives, such as district heating and cooling, will likely be required to minimise the strain on the electricity grid in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Due to its high thermal performance, ground source heat pump systems (GSHPs) have been introduced as an alternative to reduce energy consumption of heating and cooling systems. The thermal performance of GSHPs strongly depends on ground temperature and energy demand for heating and cooling during the year. Certainly, increasing the global temperature means warmer ground. On the other hand, the thermal load of a building is influenced by thermal quality of building envelop (TQBE) and also influenced by the ambient air temperature. There is absolutely no doubt that the global temperature has increased during the last century. Over time, the buildings designs are changing. These result in changed thermal load of the buildings, ground temperature, and thereby changed the thermal performance of GSHPs. The objective of current work was to investigate the impact of TQBE under different global warming scenarios on driving energy and construction cost of GSHPs in Vienna. This was achieved by comparing the driving energy of the GSHP as well the required total length of the borehole heat exchanger for different GW scenarios and different TQBE. Under climate conditions of Vienna city study shows that improving the TQBE and increasing ambient air temperature result in reduced driving energy of GSHP. While is it not obvious for the required total borehole depth. Namely, after a certain degree of GW, increasing TQBE might result in increased required borehole depth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The investigation presented in this article was aimed at demonstrating the technical and economical feasibility of using ground source heat pump systems in mixed climate applications, where cooling requirements are dominant. We show an experimental comparison between a ground coupled heat pump system and a conventional air to water heat pump system, focussing at the heating and cooling energy performance. A direct comparison could be made as both systems are linked, in parallel, to the same building with exactly the same loads and climatic conditions. For a whole climatic season the results obtained show that the geothermal system saves, in terms of primary energy consumption, a of the energy consumed by the conventional one when the system is working in heating mode, and a when the system is working in cooling mode. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]