Abstract
Households have been pointed out as a significant source of air pollution and climate change. In Europe, the 60% of energy used by households is for space heating. The present work focuses on improving the knowledge on residential heating characteristics in Greece. The full causal chain, from the appliances used to the pollutants emitted, is examined at thelocal scale. A crowdsourcing approach was followed for the collection of the necessary data for performing the emissions calculations. With the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS), dynamic maps were produced for each Greek region, providing the information produced in this study in gridded form. In terms of energy demands, it was found that Greece relies mainly on oil and biomass and secondarily on gas and electricity. The use of biomass burning as a main heating fuel is quite high inthe colder and rural areas, while it is popular as a secondary heating fuel inthe urban areas. The residential heating period in Greece lasts from October to April and it is even shorter in southern Greece. In terms of emissions, CO and PM10 had the highest values since they are related to biomass burning. NOx emissions are mainly emitted by the oil burned in boilers.
Highlights
The most common purposes that households use energy for are space heating and cooling, water heating, cooking, lighting and the operation of multiple electrical appliances
The residential heating emissions were calculated for the period 2006–2017 for Greece based on the Tier 2 approach proposed by the EMEP/EAA Emission Inventory Guidebook 2019 [30]
Among the annual emissions from residential heating calculated in this study for Greece, CO (108.98 ktonnes in 2006 and 143.39 ktonnes in 2017) and PM10 (22.09 ktonnes in 2006 and 28.49 ktonnes in 2017) were the highest during the whole period (2006–2017) followed by NMVOC (15.91 ktonnes in 2006 and 20.96ktonnes in 2017) and NOx (10.79 ktonnes in 2006 and 6.19 ktonnes in 2017) (Figure 4 left)
Summary
The most common purposes that households use energy for are space heating and cooling, water heating, cooking, lighting and the operation of multiple electrical appliances. The main use of energy in households was for space heating (63.61% of the total residential energy consumption), with renewable fuels accounting for more than a quarter (27.05%). The residential sector contributes by 27% and 17% to global energy consumption and CO2 emissions [1]. Among the most impactful changes for the residential sector low carbon heating devices and the use of renewable energy are considered [2]. Many researchers have laid down new, unprecedented targets for frontier heating appliances and fuels that are conducive to green energy production and lower emissions. Studies have focused on comparisons of the fuels’ characteristics in order to propose the optimum fuel for each case [3,4], the production of biofuels ([5] and references therein), as well as the improvement of the fuels’
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