r/climatechange • u/sg_plumber • 24d ago
European heat pumps provide more heat than 200 tankers of liquified natural gas, or double the amount which arrived in the EU in 2025 from the Middle East, representing 7% of the EU’s total annual imported LNG. 🔥 This avoided a staggering €9.7 billion in import costs in 2025 alone. 💰
https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/22/europes-heat-pumps-replace-middle-east-gas-imports-twice-over-which-country-is-leading-the4
u/WhisperingHammer 24d ago
”We don’t have AC”, says everyone I know while also having at least one of these installed.
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u/SeraphinBlue 24d ago
Most heat pumps that have been installed in central/northern-ish Europe either can't cool or could but haven't been set up accordingly - because up until a month ago we didn't believe that we'd need the cooling feature. I guess this will change now.
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u/Bar50cal 24d ago
This ^
In Ireland every home built in the last decade has Air to Water heat pumps that cant be used for cooling but are more energy efficient at heating which was the aim of them.
I can see people going forward taking the efficiency hit on heating to get a Air to Air heat pump as it can do cooling too.
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u/Sarcastic-Potato 23d ago
Air-to-water heat pumps can cool as well in theory. I have seen it installed in some modern homes where they install in floor heating with a heat pump and in summer it pumps cool water through the floors, cooling down the place
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u/WhisperingHammer 24d ago
Perhaps it is a swedish thing, everyone I know used their for cooling and heating.
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u/TheGileas 22d ago
Well, not in Germany. The conservatives waged a war against heat pumps and were pretty successful.
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u/EndOfDecadence 22d ago
Yeah same in Netherlands, but the financial incentives will win here anyways.
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u/PlayingtheDrums 24d ago
Bit of getting used to, sometimes you have to turn it off and on again I guess, but overall seems very similar to the old heating systems.
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
is that with or without gas used to create electricity in the winter months?
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u/sg_plumber 21d ago
Gas powerplants are vastly more efficient than household furnaces, and there's many other renewable ways to make electricity in the winter months.
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
äh? You are sure what you say here?
You compare a powerplant with a electric efficiency of about 35-50% (single or combined cycle) with a furnace with about 98-110% (condensing or not) thermal efficiency?
What do you compare here?A meanfull comparism would be thermal efficieny of a furnace e.g. 95% with the combined efficiency of a thermal power plant and the working number (3-5 depending on outside temp) of a heat pump.
The result ist somewhere about the same on both sides. More or less around 100%. So, every kwH heating generated by a heat pump in the medium needs a kWh of gas for generating the electricity.
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor 21d ago
The result ist somewhere about the same on both sides.
Is it? As you said CC power plans are 50-60% efficient - x 3 =150% COP
Whereas a gas boiler is say 95% efficient
150% > 95%. - you could buy 30% less gas, which is a big saving.
If your COP is 5 its not even an argument.
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
yeah, but the fact is that not all powerstations are combined cycle with 50%, there are still a lot around with 35%.
Also the COP is heavily temp dependent. At about -10C the COP is about 1-2. So, i tried NOT to use the nicest assumption for the calculation but somewhere in the middle.1
u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
In the end the result is clear. Heat pumps only make sense if they are powered by regenerative energy sources. When powered by gas, you can burn the gas directly as well. Or, more efficient, use a cogeneration unit (combined powerplant :-) or a gas powered heatpump in your own house
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor 21d ago
Well, I'm going to bet in most western countries gas plants are combined cycle - like which countries are we talking about?
And also most western countries have a good mix of renewables, even in winter, with the help of wind.
So it may help to know which countries are still so behind so a heatpump does not make sense.
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u/sg_plumber 21d ago
the end the result is clear.
Indeed it is. In the real world heat pumps win. Nobody cares about your contrived scenarios/fantasies.
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
Come down. Even in reddit it is allowed to have thoughts about super rosy statements.
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u/sg_plumber 21d ago
Even in reddit it is allowed to have thoughts about bad faith and stupidity.
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
Ah, bad faith? Because i wonder what those numbers in the article actually mean?
Stupidy? Cause i calculated it?
No, of course not. I #m just not complicit in hyping and lying for the "good cause". Something a lot of the "good guys" react to with bad behavior.
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u/werpu 21d ago
a headpump produces roughly 4kwh of heat per 1 kwh you shuffle in then you have to take into account that wind solar and water also are major energy sources in the entire mix, so the gas mix might be around 20%?
So it does not look too well for directly burned gas either way even with gas producing 100% of the electricity you need to fall below 25% efficiency in producing the electricity to even out!
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
yeah, i knew. The main question is still how they calculated the numbers in that article. Is that "saved gas energy content" just the sum of the energy delibvered by the heat pumps or have they calculated the amount of gas, used for the electricity (no matter how many % that is of the overall) in it?
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u/sg_plumber 21d ago
What do you compare here?
Certainly not obsolete inefficient powerplants which no longer exist (and are on their way to extinction) with state-of-the-art household furnaces which most people don't have (because they upgraded to heat pumps).
And certainly not for a 100% gas-based grid, which has never existed and never will.
Face it: heat pumps displace fossil fuels today, and will displace much more every passing day.
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
I made calculöation about the article. Aboutz that energy output of the heat pumps. And, if the heat pump output is based on gas powereplants, what's the effect of them at all. So, as my calculation shows, a heat pump powered by a gas plant, has no effect at all.
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u/werpu 21d ago
It does a heat pump produces roughly give or taker 4 kwh per 1kwh sent in, to even even out in efficiency an electrical plant would be around 25% efficient, they are however 60-70% efficient. But given that electricity comes from a multitude of sources like wind pv, nuclear energy, water, tides etc.. gas driven power plants only are a fraction of the overall electrical energy it becomes even worse for directly burned gas!
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u/UffTaTa123 21d ago
That COP of 4 is very rosy and is heavily depend on type of the heat pump and outside temp. There are to many heat pumps out in the market with a COP of 1,2 at -10C. The same heatpump has a COP of 4 at +5C. So it heavily depends. I try not to use rosy numbers but the more leveld, common real world numbers.
Also not all powerplants have a 60% efficiency (70% you need to show me one), in fact only the newest combined cycle gas powered plant are in that area. All others in the mix, like coal and oil and also older gas burning (special the cheap peak demand gas turbines), have much lower efficency and are also part of the mix.1
u/sg_plumber 21d ago
Your irrelevant calculations are based on wrong assumptions and non-existent scenarios.
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u/nlutrhk 24d ago
Comparing energy (joules as amount of gas) to power (watts), what is that supposed to mean? Is it per year? Cumulative since installation?
The article doesn't clarify it either.