Heat generation is one of the largest CO2 emitters in the world. The need to decarbonize it is urgent. What are the challenges to achieving this and how can new tech aid the switch?
On this panel, Associate Director of Frontier Economics, Claire Thornhill, theorized, “I think some of the challenges relate to the fact that, to decarbonize heat, you have to go into people's homes and that brings risk, it brings hassle and it's generally quite a difficult thing to do.” She went on to add, “And, of course, there's the higher upfront costs of the low carbon technologies relative to the incumbent technologies.”
Jan Rombolotto, Director of Group Digital Strategy & Transformation at Vaillant Group, agreed that deploying the technology will be the industry’s toughest challenge. “What we need to learn is patience,” he said. “I see a lot of positive momentum and development. We have the numbers for scaling heat pumps. We can expect this to be accelerated over the coming years.”
Till Schicke, Head of Solution Business at tadoº, believes that flexibility is equally as important as patience. “We have the technology for connectivity and all of the software and algorithms to basically connect all of these assets,” he said, adding that these must be connected in a smart way to boost production and demand.
Then, Heliostorage CEO Denise Conway suggested that “with a combination of heat pump and solar thermal energy storage, that is both short term and seasonal storage, you can provide a system that is very efficient.” She also said that adding a smart thermometer will provide the customer with an efficient and cost effective system.
