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Heating affects the climate
The heating of rooms and water at home causes, as a percentage, the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions, whereby heating is the most important at 88 percent. This is due to the fact that Swiss households mainly use oil (78 percent of greenhouse gas emissions) and gas (18 percent).
Overall, the emissions from household electricity are insignificant. Nevertheless, electricity and thereby the use of electrical devices still causes CO2 emissions.
- Greenhouse gas emissions in Switzerland for the household sector.
Half of households are heated with oil
57 percent of Swiss households are heated by classical oil heating systems, 14 percent using natural gas, 13 percent using wood, 11 percent using electricity, 4 percent by heat pumps, 1 percent using a district heating system and less than 1 percent with coal or solar power.
Coal heating systems are very CO2 intensive, but they have become rare in Switzerland.
The popular oil heating systems account for 78 percent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by heating. Gas heating systems add another 18 percent.
District heating is produced in a central heating plant and distributed to the end users. Here the CO2 balance depends on the energy sources used (refuse, wood, waste heat, environmental heat, natural gas, oil). Usually it is, however, very high, as the graph shows.
As Swiss electricity is mainly produced from nuclear and hydro-electric power, the CO2 emissions for electricity are low. Greenhouse gas emissions related to solar panels are due to the energy consumption in the production of the components.
CO2 emissions for hot water
Overall, 11 percent of the energy requirement of the household sector is consumed by hot water generation. Today, hot water is mainly heated by fossil fuels in the form of oil or natural gas and by electricity. A lot of heat and therefore energy is lost in non-insulated water pipelines. Overall hot water systems in this country emit 1.8 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent annually.
- Greenhouse gas emissions according to the energy sources of hot water systems.
Source: BFE 2007a, ecoinvent 2006
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