A bottom-up estimation of the heating and cooling demand in European industry

Energy balances are usually aggregated at the level of subsector and energy carrier. While heating and cooling accounts for half the energy demand of the European Union’s 28 member states plus Norway, Switzerland and Iceland (EU28 + 3), currently, there are no end-use balances that match Eurostat’s energy balance for the industrial sector. Here, we present a methodology to disaggregate Eurostat’s energy balance for the industrial sector. Doing so, we add the dimensions of temperature level and end-use. The results show that, although a similar distribution of energy use by temperature level can be observed, there are considerable differences among individual countries. These differences are mainly caused by the countries’ heterogeneous economic structures, highlighting that approaches on a process level yield more differentiated results than those based on subsectors only. We calculate the final heating demand of the EU28 + 3 for industrial processes in 2012 to be 1035, 706 and 228 TWh at the respective temperature levels > 500 °C (e.g. iron and steel production), 100–500 °C (e.g. steam use in chemical industry) and < 100 °C (e.g. food industry); 346 TWh is needed for space heating. In addition, 86 TWh is calculated for the industrial process cooling demand for electricity in EU28 + 3. We estimate additional 12 TWh of electricity demand for industrial space cooling. The results presented here have contributed to policy discussions in the EU (European Commision 2016), and we expect the additional level of detail to be relevant when designing policies regarding fuel dependency, fuel switching and specific technologies (e.g. low-temperature heat applications).