Abstract
Although its use is declining, oil heating is still used in areas not covered by the methane grid. Oil heating is becoming more and more expensive, requires frequent tank refill operations, and has high emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutants such as SOx. In addition, spills from oil underground storage tanks (USTs) represent a serious environmental threat to soil and groundwater quality. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis on technical alternatives to oil heating with reference to the Aosta Valley (NW Italy), where this fuel is still often used and numerous UST spills have been reported in the last 20 years. We assess operational issues, GHG and pollutant emissions, and unit costs of the heat produced for several techniques: LPG boilers, wood boilers (logs, chips, pellets) and heat pumps (air-source, geothermal closed-loop and open-loop systems). We examine the investment to implement such solutions in two typical cases, a detached house and a block of flats, deriving payback times of about 3–8 years. Wood log boilers turn out to be the most economically convenient solutions; however, heat pumps provide several benefits from the operational and environmental points of view. In addition, including solar thermal panels for domestic hot water or a photovoltaic plant would have payback times of about 6–9 years. The results highlight the economic feasibility and the multiple benefits of a rapid phase-out of oil heating in Italy.
Highlights
Oil still covers about 10% of the heating demand in the world [1] and 12% in the European Union [2], yet its use is declining due to the increased fuel cost and the high emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases
We present a comprehensive analysis on technical alternatives to oil heating with reference to the Aosta Valley (NW Italy), where this fuel is still often used and numerous underground storage tanks (USTs) spills have been reported in the last 20 years
Resulting heating unit costs for different heat pumps are reported in Table 7 and they are by 46% to 71.9% lower than those obtained with oil boilers
Summary
Oil still covers about 10% of the heating demand in the world [1] and 12% in the European Union [2], yet its use is declining due to the increased fuel cost (e.g., it has more than tripled in the USA since 2000 [3]) and the high emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases. Ten of these 68 sites have been remediated with a median cost of 114k€ which is consistent with data from the USA [5,6]. The replacing technique should be considered: for example, shifting 20% of heating systems from oil with wood burning in Thessaloniki resulted in a +52% increase of PM 2.5, which is deemed responsible for about 200 premature deaths per year [15] These studies provide a knowledge base for the work presented in this paper, which comprehensively addresses the issue of replacement of oil boilers, with an application to the case study area of Aosta Valley. The economic results are integrated with an analysis of environmental externalities (greenhouse gases and pollutant emissions) and discussed, comparing strengths and weaknesses of each heating and DHW production technique and deriving policy recommendation to phase out oil heating
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