Primary energy use for heating in the Swedish building sector—Current trends and proposed target

One goal of the Swedish energy policy is to reduce the amount of electricity used for heating in the building sector. This means to reduce the primary energy used for heating which in this paper is analyzed in the context of various heating technologies and CO₂ emissions. The analysis is applied to a region in Sweden (southern Sweden) for which detailed information on the energy infrastructure (the capital stock of the buildings and heating systems together with geographical variations in heat intensity) is available from a previous work [Johansson, P., Nylander, A., Johnsson, F., 2005. Electricity dependency and CO₂ emissions from heating in the Swedish building sector—current trends in conflict with governmental policy? Energy policy] and which is large enough to be assumed representative for Sweden as a whole. The detailed mapping of the energy infrastructure allows a good estimate on the rate at which the energy system can be expected to be replaced with respect to economical lifetime of the capital stock (the year 2025 in this case). Two scenarios are investigated; a target scenario for which energy savings are employed (e.g. improving climate shell in buildings) and oil and most of the electricity used for heating purposes are phased out and a second for which the current trend in the heating market continues.