Heating constitutes 50% of global final energy consumption, making the shift to renewable energy imperative. In both China and Germany, fossil fuels still dominate heating, contributing significantly to CO2 emissions. To accelerate the heating transition, our focus is on sustainable solutions - heat pumps and district heating. While Northern China relies heavily on fossil-fuel-based district heating, decentralised solutions are prevalent in the South and rural areas. Technologies like heat pumps or waste heat utilisation are a crucial part of the solution for decarbonisation but still face significant challenges when it comes to regulation, standardisation, cost, and awareness. The EP therefore works together with researchers, industry associations and companies to tackle these challenges.
Our Goal
By providing a platform and facilitating political and technological exchanges among multiple stakeholders, we contribute to a stronger support policy framework, more sophisticated and internationally compatible standards, and better market conditions for future sustainable heating systems.
Heat pumps – Integrating Renewable Energy in the Heating Sector
Heat pumps are an ideal technology for an energy system based on renewable energy with a high degree of electrification. Their energy efficiency vastly surpasses other heating technologies, and when running on renewable electricity, heat pumps are virtually emission free. Heat pumps are suitable both for distributed and centralised heating systems.
Heat pumps face challenges that hold back a faster scale up in China and thus require supportive framework conditions to unleash the decarbonising potential.
Lack of policy support: At the national level, heat pump technology is not recognised as a renewable heat source and therefore cannot be subsidised accordingly.
Less mature standards: Standards and norms for heat pump systems are less mature compared to those for in-cumbent technology, e.g. for design or energy efficiency labeling. Divergent standards also increase the complexity for introducing highly efficient products to the local market.
Lack of skilled labor: A shortage of adequately skilled labor for installation and maintenance of heat pump systems is a bottleneck for faster scale up.
Our Activities and Results
Sharing German Experience and Policy Advice to Improve the Political and Legal Framework
Heat Pump White Book - Every year, the Energy Partnership supports China’s heat pump industry association CHPA in developing the annual Heat Pump White Book by sharing German and European heat pump policy experiences and market trends. The White Book aggregates latest knowledge about heat pumps in China and internationally for an audience ranging from business over academia to policymakers.
Political exchange – In 2024, together with CHPA, the Energy Partnership will hold an expert workshop with the participation of Chinese ministries NEA, NDRC and think tanks on the definition of heat pumps as a renewable heat source. The German heat pump association (BWP) will be invited to share Germany’s recent experience of shifting the definition of heat pumps from sustainable to renewable and the impact this had on the market of this clean heating technology.
Standard for System Energy Efficiency Promotes the Upscaling of Heat Pumps in China
Moving from the transition solution to the systematic upgrade, the Energy Partnership continues collaboration with CHPA and German companies and developed the group standard on measuring and labeling the total system energy efficiency of different heating equipment incl. heat pump systems. Taking the EU approach as reference, the new standard is part of a larger effort to make energy efficiency characteristics in China more comparable on two dimensions, namely the total system energy efficiency of heat pump systems, and the energy efficiency between various heating technologies. This makes the superior efficiency of heat pumps more evident. Another focus of this standard is to measure the energy efficiency of the overall heat pump system, including water pumps, which have high energy-saving potential. For German companies, which commonly use high-efficiency pumps, the implementation of the standard will increase their competitiveness in the Chinese market. The Energy Partnership will work together with German companies, CHPA and CNIS to promote the group standard to a national standard.
Facilitating German-Chinese Business Exchanges
The Energy Partnership is committed to connect business to government and facilitate B2B exchange sin heat pump industry of both countries. We support German companies to use their extensive experience and contribute to the development of white papers, standards and training materials, while we collaborate with Chinese industry associations to organise business roundtables. The roundtables enable companies from Germany and China to better understand the market development, the sustainable and economic aspects of requirements and solutions, thus bridging business and policy-making to improve market conditions for green and sustainable heating solutions.
Enhancing Green Skills through Training Material for Heat Pump Installation
In 2023, the Energy Partnership facilitated collaboration between German and Chinese heat pump companies and associations to develop a specialised training program for Chinese technicians. The new curriculums with experience of Germany’s dual vocational education system, improve technicians’ skills to effectively install heat pump systems integrated with hydraulic systems. By optimising the efficiency of these systems, energy consumption can be significantly reduced.
District heating towards more efficient and low-carbon solutions
District heating is a predominant source of heat in Northern Chinese cities andprimarily relies on fossil fuels. It is relatively more efficient than distributed fossil heating solutions and large urban heating grids enable favorable economies of scale regarding the cost of heat supply. This, and the path-dependency inherent in the existing district heating infrastructure, make district heating an important field of action.
District heating currently is largely based on coal and efficiency losses in the grid and building envelopes are high. Significant progress towards a low-carbon transition remains weak due to:
Lack of economic and regulatory incentives: Existing framework conditions do not sufficiently promote using re-newable energy. Large-scale heat pumps will need support for investment and operation costs, waste heat utilisa-tion needs improved planning procedures and potentially mandatory requirements.
Area-based billing: On the demand side, the predominant billing of heating costs based on heated floor area pro-vides poor incentives for improved efficiency compared to billing based on actual consumption. Potentials to re-duce heating energy demand thus remain unexploited.
Our Activities and Results
Sharing German Experience and Policy Advice to Improve the Political and Legal Framework
In 2022, the Energy Patnership elaborated policy recommendations to NEA and NDRC on promoting decarbonisation of district heating in cooperation with the industry association Clean Heating Industry Committee (CHIC) and German heating technology companies.
In 2023, the project team delved deeper and specified heat metering in district heating. The policy recommendation on heat metering based on German experience and best practices was adopted by CHIC and submitted to NDRC as policy recommendations to advance China’s heat metering reform.
Facilitating German-Chinese Business Exchanges: Bridging Solutions, Needs, Challenges, and Opportunities
The annual Sino-German Clean Heating Forum in collaboration with CHIC and AHK Greater China provided a platform to connect heating companies to governments, and companies from Europe and China. The attending experts shared experiences and trends in regulative frameworks and technological developments in district heating decarbonisation.
