On the Future Role of Heat Pumps in Swedish District Heating Systems - Competition with Waste Incineration and Combined Heat and Power Under Greenhouse Gas Emission Restrictions

Paper in proceeding, 2005

Heat pumps play an important role in Swedish district heating systems. Various policy instruments currently introduced, for example tradable emission permits, tradable green certificates and the ban on land filling of combustible waste will have an impact on the role of heat pumps in district heating systems. In this paper, a case study of a district heating system is performed to analyze how the heat production of an existing heat pump and the possibilities to reinvest in a new heat pump if the existing is phased out is changed due to waste incineration. Results are obtained for several scenarios of policy instruments. In most scenarios used in the study, waste incineration will reduce the heat production from the heat pump. However, in some cases, waste incineration replaces an investment in combined heat and power that would have reduced the heat pump even more, thus the results indicate that the impact of waste incineration on heat pumps is ambiguous.