By Meletus EZE
Increasing use of electricity to warm Britain’s homes, instead of gas, could be more than triple power demand from the heating sector by 2050, energy research company Aurora said on Tuesday.
Around 80 per cent of British homes are heated by gas, but Chancellor Philip Hammond, last week, pledged to ban fossil fuel heating systems in new homes built from 2025.
Heating homes from electric sources such as heat pumps could increase power demand from the sector to around 100 terawatt hours (TWh) a year by 2050, from around 27 TWh a year today, in a new research.
Britain’s total electricity demand is around 320 TWh a year.
The Committee on Climate Change, an independent advisory panel, said energy use in homes accounted for around 14 per cent of British greenhouse gas emissions.
It called for reduction in energy, if the country is to meet emission reduction targets.
Britain has a legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent, compared with 1990 levels by 2050.
Wider moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions and electrify heating and transport could increase electricity demand across Europe by as much as 85 percent by 2050, the analysts said.
Renewables such as wind and solar could provide more than 60 per cent of Europe’s power supply by 2040.
However, around 400 million euros (342 million pounds) of investment will be needed to build new projects, the research said.=====Reuters
