Environmental Relevance

Environmental Relevance of Heat Pumps. Energy is the driving force of life as we know it today and we risk destroying our planet to obtain it. The European Union is dependent on 50% of imported fuel to create energy and its predicted that within 30 years this will increase to 70%. As our countries become even more dependant on fossil fuels like gas, oil and even coal any pressure in the supply chain usually results in consumer price rises. Oil like other fossil fuels has limited reserves. There is strong evidence oil production will be peaking worldwide before the end of the decade, since new oil discoveries are not sufficient to compensate for decreasing known reserves. That together with emerging economies like China demand can only increase. This will leave us to our natural fallback of gas, however there is evidence of a similar depletion pattern occurring here. Climate change or global warming is occurring due to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is caused by gases that trap some of the suns energy that would otherwise be reflected back into space. The concentration of C02 gas in the atmosphere is approximately 30% higher than pre-industrial levels due primarily to an increase in burning fossil fuels, thus increasing the earths temperature from 0.4 -0.8oC. By the end of the century this could be as high as 3 - 5 oC resulting in water supply pollution problems, rising sea levels, coast erosion, human and animal health problems etc… ACT NOW Heat pumps can have a positive effect on the problems above by using efficient electricity with ambient heat from natural source (ground water) they can reduce the demand for heating and cooling to avoid greenhouse gas emissions. All this is also cost saving as energy is saved on input to gain the same energy output. This shows in every 100 units of useful heat produced a heat pump is more than 50% energy saving and is therefore helpful in reducing fuel imports, and fuel wastage.