How do Europeans spend the cold winter?

Through “natural gas heating”, “fuel heating”, “electric heating”, “heat pump heating” and “solar heating”, it provides people with sufficient heat in winter. But no one way of heating is perfect. They have their own advantages and disadvantages:

1. The heating method of burning natural gas to generate heat has relatively low input cost and is more environmentally friendly than burning diesel. However, after the start of use, the level of fuel costs depends on the fluctuation of natural gas market prices. In some independent houses in Europe, in addition to mainly using natural gas as heating energy, they often use auxiliary solar heating or other forms of heating for mixed use.

2. In this way of heating with diesel, the investment in infrastructure is relatively low. If natural gas is used for heating, it is necessary to install natural gas pipelines. Diesel heating is a kind of heating technology, the current technology is very mature, the price of diesel is relatively stable and cheap. The disadvantage of this heating method of diesel heating is that it requires additional space for storing diesel, but burning diesel will cause more carbon emissions.

3. Electric heating is the most convenient and simple heating device to install, and the space required is quite limited. However, this heating method is also the least economical heating method, because electric heating not only consumes high electricity, but also the price of electricity has been rising. Electric heaters are rarely used in newly constructed residential buildings in Germany.

4. Heat pump heating, taking geothermal heat as an example, heating by geothermal heat has high efficiency and low use cost, and it will not cause carbon dioxide emissions. However, in order to realize geothermal heating, the initial construction investment is quite high.

5. The advantage of solar heating is that it does not require fossil fuels, so it will not cause air pollution. In addition, the longer the service life, the higher the cost of recovery. However, solar heating also has many shortcomings. For example, the current technology still cannot make solar heating an independent heating source. When the heat is insufficient, users can use electric heating and gas heating as auxiliary heating to ensure a stable supply of heat. In order to obtain a certain scale of heating, it is also necessary to install a considerable number of solar collectors. But through the combined use of energy, not only can people's heat supply be guaranteed, but also energy can be saved to the greatest extent and the cost of use can be reduced. This is currently the most reasonable solution.