As illustrated above, the Danish society can choose to implement a district heating and individual heat pump strategy in different ways in terms of the system integration and the production meeting the increased demand for district heating. In the
following, it has been chosen to continue with the VP-Sol-Geo-Bio alternative. Here, this option serves as a good example, since the use of biomass and coal are the same as in the reference.
As illustrated in Fig. 5, the implementation of the VP-Sol-Geo- Bio alternative will slightly decrease the annual cost of heating the houses in question compared to the reference, when all investments are paid for during the technical lifetime. The total net investment amounts to approximately 9 billion EUR. 13 billion EUR must be invested, but 4 billion EUR of investments can be saved compared to the reference.
Table 1 illustrates the annual investments and operation cost, given that the alternative is implemented over a period of 10 years from 2011 to 2020. As shown, such implementation plan requires substantial net investments, which will gradually result in substantial savings in fuel costs.
The net investments will have a negative influence (positive net
import) on the balance of payment in the beginning. However, due to the saved import of fossil fuels, this influence is reduced and will end up being positive (negative net import). When measured over the total lifetime of the investment, the effect is both substantial and positive.
The net investments made during the 10-year implementation period also result in the creation of approximately 7e8000 jobs in total for the 10-year period.
However, the implementation of the alternative has an influence on the governmental expenditures in several ways. First of all, the alternative cannot be implemented without the formulation of an active energy policy, since some of the investments are not feasible to the investors with the current taxes and subsidies. Secondly, since the oil and natural gas consumptions are currently taxed, the government will lack this income when these fuels are replaced. Finally, the creation of jobs will generate additional income taxes.
In Table 2, an estimate is made of the extent of the different consequences. This is an estimate, since VAT and multiplication effects have not been included. Moreover, due to the very complex taxation system in Denmark, all effects have not been calculated in detail. However, the table provides a good overview of the magnitude of the influence of the different measures.