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In Sweden, 90% of multifamily buildings utilize district heat and a large portion is in need of renovation. The aim is to analyze the impact of renovating a multifamily building stock in a district heating and cooling system, in terms of primary energy savings, peak power demands, electricity demand and production, and greenhouse gas emissions on local and global levels. The study analyzes scenarios regarding measures on the building envelope, ventilation, and substitution from district heat to ground source heat pump. The results indicate improved energy performance for all scenarios, ranging from 11% to 56%. Moreover, the scenarios present a reduction of fossil fuel use and reduced peak power demand in the district heating and cooling system ranging from 1 MW to 13 MW, corresponding to 4–48 W/m2 heated building area. However, the study concludes that scenarios including a ground source heat pump generate significantly higher global greenhouse gas emissions relative to scenarios including district heating. Furthermore, in a future fossil-free district heating and cooling system, a reduction in primary energy use will lead to a local reduction of emissions along with a positive effect on global greenhouse gas emissions, outperforming measures with a ground source heat pump.

Abstract:In the European Union's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, the energy efficiency goal for buildings is set in terms of primary energy use. In the proposal from the National Board of Housing, Building, and Planning, for nearly zero energy buildings in Sweden, the use of primary energy is expressed as a primary energy number calculated with given primary energy factors. In this article, a multi-dwelling building is simulated and the difference in the primary energy number is investigated when the building uses heat from district heating systems or from heat pumps, alone or combined with solar thermal or solar photovoltaic systems. It is also investigated how the global CO 2 emissions are influenced by the different energy system combinations and with different fuels used. It is concluded that the calculated primary energy number is lower for heat pump systems, but the global CO 2 emissions are lowest when district heating uses mostly biofuels and is combined with solar PV systems. The difference is up to 140 tonnes/year. If the aim with the Swedish building code is to decrease the global CO 2 emissions then the ratio between the primary energy factors for electricity and heat should be larger than three and considerably higher than today.

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Linköping municipality has managed biogas driven buses in the regional transport system since 1997 and all buses in the municipality have run on biogas since 2015. Biogas is a renewable fuel and by replacing fossil fuels it can help to lower net CO2 emissions. However, Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) in buses still have a rather low effciency, in the range of 15–30%. If the combustion of biogas instead takes place in a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) effciency could be higher and heat losses reduced. This could be a feasible solution if the transport system instead used electric buses charged with electricity generated by the CCGT. This article has a top-down perspective on the regional transport system and the regional district heating system (DHS) in Linköping municipality. Two alternative systems are compared regarding CO2 emissions, electricity production and component effciencies. The first system that is studied is in operation today and uses locally produced biogas in the ICE buses. In parallel the combined heat and power (CHP) system delivers electricity and heat to households in the region. The second system that is studied is a system with electric buses and a CHP system that uses biogas in the CCGT to deliver electricity and heat to the regional power grid and DHS. The study shows that emissions would be reduced if biogas use is changed from use in ICE buses to use in the CCGT in the CHP-DHS. Improved biogas use could lower CO2-eq emissions by 2.4 million kg annually by using a better fuel-energy pathway.