Heating solutions for residential buildings in China: Current status and future outlook

With continuing of urbanization, improving of life quality as well as combating against air pollution, China is facing comprehensive challenges to supply modern clean heating to a majority of its citizens. For space heating solutions, currently in urban areas of north China, coal based district heating is prevalent. In urban areas of south China, distributed heating solutions are used. In rural areas, de-centralized coal stoves and biomass stoves are still commonly used. As renewable building heating solution, ground source heat pumps are installed for large scale applications. Building floor areas heated by ground source heat pumps increased tremendously during past ten years. Air source heat pump is being promoted in north Chinese rural areas as part of coal to clean heating project. Solar water heater and electric water heater for domestic hot water supply is widely used in north China and gas water boiler is widely used in south China. A series of policies have encouraged clean fossil fuel district heating in north China. National development plans are also supporting and subsidizing renewable heating technology such as heat pumps. Different building heating technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages from techno-economic and environmental perspectives. The choice of building heating solutions for different geolocations of China is strongly affected by spatial parameters such as local climate condition, population distribution, natural resource availability etc. Therefore, a spatial data analysis method is essential to help stakeholders decide proper building heating solutions in different parts of China by key performance indicators reflecting lower primary energy use, economic affordability and lower environmental impact.