What’s The Alternative To Gas in 2022

Eurostat have been collecting and publishing data about energy consumption of households since 2017. In 2020, most of the EU final energy consumption in the residential sector is covered by natural gas (31.7 %) and electricity (24.8 %). It will be very interesting to watch how the statistics will change after the winter in 2022. Gas supply becomes hot topic due to the actual geopolitical situation and uncertainty of its supply. Price of the gas and electricity is breaking all time records and only future knows where this all will end. To be able to find the best alternative to gas, we need firstly better understand how and where we use it.   

What Uses the most Energy in Your Home ?

Base on the data from Eurostat, Heating of space and Water represents 77.9 % of the total energy consumed by households. It is shocking how much energy is used for just “heating” of our homes. The highest energy is consumed by space heating which represent more than 62% and the second biggest use is for Water Heating which is more than 15% of total heating energy.

Each country is in unique location with specific weather and seasons. From the available data is obvious that regions such as Malta , Cyprus are consuming significantly less energy for space heating compare to countries like Luxemburg (81%) which is on the top of energy use  following by Slovakia (73.1%), Belgium (72.7 %), Estonia (72.1 %), Austria (69.8 %) and Lithuania (69.0 %) (see the table)  

How to heat your home with no Gas

There are many alternatives you can choose to keep your sweet home warm place. From traditional Wood, Coal, heating Oil to little greener solutions like Biomass, Infrared heaters, Electric heaters up to the modern technical solutions like heat pumps or solar thermal systems. 

All those traditional ways have one common thing… that you always need to buy a source of fuel. Here is the catch, as many of us are dreaming to be independent from gas, tendency is to go towards more traditional source of energy like wood, coal and oil which is logically creating high demand after these commodities and as we all well know, high demand = high price.

Therefore, the most logical way is to build your heating system based on the fuel, which is easy to use, have good effectivity and it’s available. From all those options is electricity the best candidate together with the heat-pump solution. Yes, you might say that electricity bills are also going to sky, but luckily there are photovoltaic panels which are tested for many years now. We all know what to expect from them and how to design the best solution for your house. They are scalable enough to achieve needed performance to cover your energy needs. 

your Welletron Team 🙂

Data source: The collection of data on energy consumption in households by type of end-use is based on the Regulation (EC) No 1099/2008 on energy statistics as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) No 2146/2019. The provision of historical series up to 2010 is made on a voluntary basis. Mandatory reporting starts with reference year 2015.

Eurostat : (nrg_d_hhq) / (nrg_d_hhq) / (nrg_bal_c)