Electrification of households

An investigation into whether the 46% EU electrification target is feasible for households in isolation.

July 28, 2026

Electrification of households

Inspired by this post by Michael Liebreich, I set out to investigate whether the EU electrification target of 46% is achievable for households in isolation.

The calculation is complicated by the myriad of heating solution: Gas boilers, heat pumps, electric resistance heating, oil boilers, district heating, wood-burning stoves, pellet boilers etc. These all have different adoption rates and efficiencies. For simplicity we will just look at homes with heat pumps as the electrified solution and assume that direct heating is negligible, especially in a future scenario. The other fossil or biomass based solution we will lump together in the same category (called ‘gas’ below), as they have similar efficiencies of around 90%, while a heat pump can have an efficiency of 300-400%. Finally, since district heating¹ uses a combination of sources, we will assume that some fraction of them are in the heat pump category and some are in the gas category.

The formula for the electrification level

To derive the equation, define the following quantities:

N_G: Number of households heated by a gas boiler.

N_HP: Number of households heated by a heat pump.

N = N_G + N_HP: Total number of households.

E_0: Base energy use of a household ignoring heating (assumed to be all electrical).

E_G: Energy use of a gas boiler for heating a single household (none electrical).

E_HP: Energy use of a heat pump for heating a single household (all electrical).

r = N_HP / N: Fraction of households with a heat pump.

e = E_G / E_HP: Efficiency gain when switching from a gas boiler to a heat pump.

p = E_0 / E_HP: Ratio of base electricity usage to heat pump electricity usage.

c: Electrification level.

We can then write down the equation.

c c c = \frac{N \cdot E _{0} + N _{H P} \cdot E _{H P}}{N \cdot E _{0} + N _{H P} \cdot E _{H P} + N _{G} \cdot E _{G}} = \frac{E _{0} + r \cdot E _{H P}}{E _{0} + r \cdot E _{H P} + ( 1 - r ) \cdot E _{G}} = \frac{p + r}{p + r + ( 1 - r ) \cdot e}

We can estimate the various parameters. The efficiency gain is frequently given as e = 3 , but could be 4 or more for a well-utilized and efficient heat pump.

The number of households in the EU is roughly N = 200 million. Of these, around 28 million have a heat pump, corresponding to 14%. However, an additional 12% of households are supplied via district heating. Now, district heating is still dominated by burning of fossil fuels and biomass, but a small and growing proportion of energy is from electricity converted via industrial heat pumps, electric boilers and from waste heat from electrified commercial enterprises such as data centers. We will thus assume currently r=0.15. Finally, the fraction of household electricity used by heat pumps is typically given as around 60%, meaning p = 40%/60% = 2/3. Now this will obviously vary with the Geography, the insulation of the building and the efficiency of the heat pump, so it should be seen as an EU wide average. It could increase with time as more southern homes requiring less heating get a heat pump and as the globe warms. Also, more electrical appliances may be used over time, including heat pumps used as air conditioning units, which would be included in E_0 as it’s not related to heating, further increasing the value of p.

With this, we get a current electrification rate of around c = 25%.

What will it take to get to 46% electrification?

We can also solve the equation for r, allowing us to to find the number of heat pump heated households necessary to obtain a given electrification level. Doing this we find.

r = \frac{c \cdot ( p + e ) - p}{1 + c \cdot ( e - 1 )}

We can plot it to visualize the relationship for various different parameter values, chosen to match the current values and what they might be in a future scenario.

This shows that we need around 50% of households heated by a heat pump using more contemporary parameters, while we may need as many as 60% in a future more electrified and efficient scenario. This again shows the irony of using percentage of electricity in final energy as the target, as it becomes harder to achieve with more efficient heat pumps, though this could also be somewhat countered by increased cooling demand and decreased heating demand in a future warmer climate.

Thus we need to go from the current 15% to 50-60% share of heat pumps in 14 years. This progress needs to come from installation of a large number of heat pumps in individual households, but also from further electrification of the district heating sector, and getting more households connected to the district heating network. We may envision then, that the goal can be achieved by installing heat pumps in an additional 30% of households, while at the same time moving 10% of households to electrified district heating. This would mean households in the EU need to install an additional 60 million heat pumps over the next 14 years, coupled with for instance a doubling of the district heating sector while achieving close to 50% electrification. (This is in terms of useful energy, not final energy, as we have already accounted for the discrepancy in efficiency between heat pumps and combustion based methods.) Now, not all electrification in the district heating sector will happen via heat pumps, as also industrial kettles are used as a flexible solution. However, substituting a resistance heating device for a heat pump in the calculations will only increase the electrification as they are less efficient.

Can we reach the target?

Currently, 2.4 million heat pumps are installed yearly in the EU (2025 value), and the Electrification Action Plan has a KPI of installing 4 million yearly by 2030. This corresponds to a yearly linear growth of 0.4 million heat pumps. This growth is not unreasonable, for instance the number of installed heat pumps has already been above 3 million in previous years. Assuming this growth continues for the next 14 years would result in a total number of new heat pumps (in millions) given by

k = 0 \sum 13 2.4 + k \cdot 0.4 = 70

Thus 70 million new heat pumps is beyond the required number of new installations calculated above, and will also make room for replacement of some existing heat pumps as they reach the end of their service lifetime, as well as some additional houses being constructed. If the number of new installations got stuck at 4 million a year from 2030, it would amount to 52 million over the 14-year period, not meeting the target. The yearly rate of installations thus needs to increase beyond 4 million a year.

Whether this is possible to achieve in practice depends on the ability to ramp up production of heat pumps, to get sufficient number of qualified personal to install them, and to get proper incentives in place to motivate house owners to install a heat pump. Additionally, not all households are suited for a heat pump, meaning they need district heating or another (electric) heating solution. Some households may share heating solutions with others, meaning fewer heat pumps are needed, while other households may need multiple heat pumps, for instance for producing both space and water heating. Further there’s the question of secondary homes and non-residential buildings which also need heating.

The expected life span of a gas boiler is 15-20 years, meaning many existing gas boilers will need replacement before 2040. There’s therefore a great opportunity for actually making the transition happen.

In summary, based on this very crude calculation, and with all the given caveats, it seems that it should be possible with a dedicated but reasonable effort to achieve the 46% electrification target for households in isolation.

I’m not quite sure how the electrification rate for district heating is accounted for. In some statistics, final energy reaching households from district heating is simply given under the label ‘heat’, and under this umbrella would mean there’s zero electricity contribution from district heating, regardless of the way it was produced. Obviously, this way of accounting would be rather meaningless if one wanted to calculate the actual electrification for households, so I’ve chosen to ignore it here, and assume that proper accounting will include whatever source of energy was used before it was turned into heat.

EAP

ElectrificationActionPlan

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