**9. Useful electricity use**

Electricity is widely used for purposes there district heating or cooling could be used in‐ stead. Electric heating is used extensively in Norway (Fig. 5) but also in several other coun‐ tries. Electricity is also generally used for air conditioning. Switching from electric heating or cooling to district heating or cooling naturally reduces the electricity consumption but if the district energy comes from a CHP plant the switching may also enable a larger electricity production there and less other electricity production is needed, which often is coal-fired condensing power plants. Thus, such energy-carrier switching influences the power system twofold through reduced demand and changed generation, which can lower fuel consump‐ tion and carbon-dioxide emissions. In Sweden, the use of district heating could be increased by 25% if all electric heating in non-rural areas was replaced by district heating [14].

**Figure 5.** Nordic heat market (Source: Norsk Bioenergiforening (NoBio)

Seen from an exergy point of view, electricity should not be used for heating purposes. This is particularly obvious if electricity is generated with low efficiency and with fuels that are both costly and not environmentally friendly. On the other hand, it could be more difficult to argue against using electricity if the power is generated through hydropower with low production cost and without emissions. This is also one of the main reasons for the rather high share of electricity in some of the heat markets shown in Fig. 5. There are different rea‐ sons why there is a widespread use of electricity-based heating in some places but a shift to district heating or other forms of heating where renewable sources are used should be seen as a necessary measure to achieve energy and environmental targets. From a Nordic per‐ spective, where the share of renewables in power production is high, a shift from electricitybased heating would offer tremendous opportunity to meet national and international policy targets through letting the not used electricity displace less environmentally benign power production. The transport sector, now being one of the main carbon-diode emitters, might alternatively benefit from energy-carrier switching to electricity. However, this de‐ pends on the maturity and the efficiency of the technology for electric vehicles.
