Residential heating costs are compared and contrasted in this data-file, for gas-fired combi boilers, gas furnaces and hot water tanks, oil furnaces and hot water tanks, purely electric heating systems including immersion heaters, air-source heat pumps and ground-source heat pumps. Capex, maintenance and input energy prices can be stress-tested.
Residential heating comprises 13% of global useful energy demand. Similarly, in the US, residential heat comprises 15% of US natural gas demand and 10% of US electricity demand. We also model residential energy consumption by region.
Hence what is the most economical option for residential heating? This data-file estimates residential heating costs for combi gas boilers, gas furnaces + water tanks, oil furnaces + water tanks, electric heating with immersion heaters, air-source heat pumps and ground-source heat pumps.
Getting these numbers right hinges on residential gas prices and residential electricity prices. The price at Henry Hub, TTF, PJM or Nord Pool is often very different from the price paid by consumers. Average residential pricing in the US and Europe are the basis for our calculations, but can also be flexed.
Costs and efficiencies of the boilers and heat pumps are based on the specifications of products available online, which are also tabulated in the data-file. Gas-fired heating is generally most economical in the US.
Heat pumps perform the thermodynamic alchemy of converting 1 kWh of electricity energy into 2-5 kWh of usable heat, which often results in net energy savings and lower CO2 intensity of heating, albeit with higher up-front capital costs, which are estimated in the data-file.
Interestingly, in Europe, using AI to load-shift a heat pump, lowering its average input electricity price, can now make an air-source heat pump more economical than a combi boiler, as modeled here. We also track heat pump sales, the economics of heat pumps, and the potential for industrial heat pumps.
In a backup tap of the data file, we also considered blue hydrogen boilers and green hydrogen boilers, although this is more of a hypothetical than an option that looks ready to scale.
Please download the data-file to stress-test residential heating costs, across different capex costs, maintenance costs and energy costs.