Impact of decarbonized heating sector at local scale on the national power grid

The space heating sector contributes significantly to global CO 2 emissions due to its heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Electrification is a key strategy for decarbonizing this sector, with a dual impact that must be assessed: a reduction in emissions, at the expense of increased demand on the electricity system during cold periods. Here we focus on how the local electrification of heat, at the scale of a district, impacts the French national electricity system. This question is formulated as a linear programming optimization problem. Results indicate that individual power-to-heat technologies both reduce cost and CO 2 emissions at both local and national scales. When combined with district heating network and thermal energy storages, large-scale heat-pumps enable substantial additional savings. Although electrification increases winter power demand, it does not foster additional needs for gas-fired capacities. We demonstrate that local electrification strategies yield both significant economic and environmental gains at the national level. Specifically, without any incentives on the cost of CO₂ the gains can reach 0.75 tCO2 per capita per year and 230€ per capita per year.