The global energy crisis and the consequences on the environment of the greenhouse gases due to
fossil fuel burns, call both, for technology to produce clean energy and for measures to reduce the energy
demand. Renewable energies can provide part of the solution, and a great effort is currently made in this
field. In Argentina, and according to the Greenhouse Effect Gases Inventory, for the year 2000, 91% of
CO2 emissions from the energy sector were originated by fuel burning, the remaining 9% was due to
fugitive emissions. Residential sector was responsible for 14.4% of those emissions. Between 1990 and2000 there was a 28% emissions’ increase, with an accumulated annual rate of 2.5%. The two sectors
with higher shares in the total net consumption were the residential one (which rose from 13.6% CFT –
total final consumption – in 1970 to 19.4% in 2003) and the commercial and public one (2.6% in 1970 to
6.7% in 2003). These consumption rates are directly related to meeting energy household and services’
needs and they had increased, mostly, due to the use of natural gas, which substituted other sources and
increased the specific consumption related to caloric use (cooking, water heating, and air heating).
Regarding fuels’ share in CO2 emissions in the residential sector, natural gas takes up 81.1%. In the last
years, the high consumption levels of natural gas during winter caused a strong restriction, between 20
and 50%, of the gas delivered to the industrial sector and to the power stations, in order to supply it to the
top priority residential sector. In this context, the use of renewable energies to provide air heating to
buildings is of great importance, linked to an improvement of the thermal conditions in the households,
both efforts being still incipient in Argentina. The situation is worst for those regions away from the local
electrical and gas grids.