Building heating solutions in China

Funded by:

China Scholarship Council (CSC file 201407930004)

STINT, Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education

NSFC, National Scientific Foundation of China

Time period: 2018-2021
Project members:

• Department of Energy Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, SJTU Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Background

Modern clean, accessible and affordable building space heating is a key towards future sustainable development of China. For a large country as China, it is impossible to recommend identical building space heating solution for everywhere. Therefore, this project aims at developing a systematic evaluation method to assist relative stakeholders decide at where and under what conditions to choose a certain building space heating solution.

The project innovatively integrate spatial data analysis with conventional building space heating and space cooling technologies by a systematic approach, so that large scale evaluations can be carried out for China. The evaluations are performed quantitatively through a number of key performance indicators, which can reflect the relative advantages and disadvantages of different building heating solutions when compared with each other. Stakeholders can benefit from such multi-criteria evaluation and policy makers can be inspired to think out of the box. The systematic approach is not confined to only understand the technology itself, but have a wider boundary to investigate different heat source, heat sink as well as energy system.

Aim and objectives

The ultimate aim of the study is to provide a spatial data based holistic method, through which stakeholders can investigate building heating solutions' feasibility in various geographical locations of China. Then the stakeholders can benefit from the insights of the results, to compose wise policy decisions or make right choice of building heating solutions. The system analysis method and consequent model should be able to compare building heating solutions' adaptability from multi-criteria perspectives such as technical, economic, environmental, geographical, social and demographical point of view. By choosing a number of key performance indicators, the potential of a specific building heating solution can be quantitatively assessed.

Outcomes

1. Comprehensive review of building heating status in China
2. A spatial data based system analysis method
3. Case studies comparing different building heating solutions in various cities across China using proposed method

Publications

All publications within the project can be found in Diva here. 

PhD Thesis: Su, C. Building heating solutions in China: A spatial system analysis , 2019.

Paper 1: Su, C.*, Madani, H., & Palm, B. (2018). Heating solutions for

residential buildings in China: Current status and future outlook. Energy

conversion and management, 177, 493-510.

Paper 2: Su, C.*, Madani, H., & Palm, B. (2019). "A Systematic multi-criteria

assessment infrastructure for residential building heating technologies

in China." International Conference on Applied Energy 2019, Aug 12-15,

2019, Västerås, Sweden.

Paper 3: Su, C.*, Madani, H., & Palm, B. (2019). Building heating solutions

in China: A spatial techno-economic and environmental analysis. Energy

conversion and management, 179, 201-218.

Paper 4: Su, C*., Madani, H., Liu, H.,Wang, R., & Palm, B. (2019). "Seawater

heat pumps in China A spatial analysis." submitted to Energy conversion

and management.

Paper 5: Su, C*., Madani, H., & Palm, B. (2019). Spatial Data Assisted

Ground Source Heat Pump Potential Analysis in China, a Case of Qingdao City.

Energy Procedia, 158, 6099-6104.

Project contact persons