[samatman]

What Europe needs is heat pumps and lots of them. More efficient heating, simply run them in reverse during a heat wave for refrigeration.

Most of the Continent is mild enough in winter that an air-loop heat pump will reliably heat throughout the winter, and these aren't more expensive to install than other heating systems, they're less energetically intense to operate, and they provide cooling on demand.

[ricardobayes]

Problem with that is electricity is expensive in Europe. Of course as you know Europe varies a lot between Portugal and Romania. While the first has a balmy 10C in winter daily low, colder areas can easily have -10C, -15C at night. That's the minimum operating range of a heat pump. That's a 30C difference to work through. That's why they have cheap (Russian) gas, it has the biggest energy density (and nuclear). Ground-source heat pumps would work better in continental Europe but they are expensive to install (I have only seen them in new build villas).

[samatman]

Putting the gas into electric generators and using that electricity to heat is more economical than burning it in a furnace for heat, heat pumps are just that much better.

I agree that the national programme must be more detailed than just declaiming "heat pumps!" and calling it even.

I gestured vaguely at the existence of parts of Europe where cheap mini-splits might not be sufficient, let's just agree I'm talking about the places where they will be.

[ricardobayes]

Apologies if my comment made it seem I disagree with you. Air-source heat pumps can definitely be used in many countries here, in fact they are already popular in the UK, and gaining popularity in Spain, due to their efficiency.