Abstract

ABSTRACT

In cold climate country like the Russian Federation, heating systems are essential during the cold winter, autumn and spring seasons. Due to the long winter season across the country, especially the central and the northern parts, this therefore creates big opportunities for conventional heating, leading to significant increase in greenhouse gas emission. Our studies showed that natural gas is the main source of heating in Russia with a little over 75% of the citizens totally dependent on it. We also showed that the burning of natural gas, produces CO₂, contributing markedly to greenhouse gas emissions from the housing sector. Furthermore, we also showed that 40% of electricity generation come from coal-fired power plants contributing to the emission of other greenhouse gases like methane (CH₄), and Nitrous Oxide (N₂O). We observed that the residential complexes in the cities are way different from the countryside, and village homes. There are three different categories of buildings: single-family, multi-family, and commercial and public buildings. Existing building stock consumes the highest amount of energy (approximately 220kwh/m² per year), new building stock  consume less energy than the existing ones and even retrofitted ones (approximately kwh/m² per year), advanced new and advanced retrofitted buildings consume very little energy (approximately 20kwh/m² per year) . The common heating system in Russia includes; centralized heating systems (CHS), district heating systems (DHS), and individual heating systems (IHS). Our results showed that in Russia, the central heating system is mainly used. This means that there is a certain thermal power plant (there used to be boiler rooms) and pipelines run underground from it to different parts of the city, in these areas they act as a distribution node from it, heat is again distributed underground to houses, hospitals, enterprises and other premises. Unfortunately, thermal power plants are located in large cities, in smaller cities heating with the help of boiler houses prevails, in villages and villages there is still furnace heating. There are several types of boiler rooms. Gas boilers are those that run on gas and there are boilers that run on fuel oil, coal, peat and firewood. Cold or hot water is supplied to the boiler from a purification station, where water is heated or supplied cold to the district water station of its district through pipes. The individual heating system comprises a thermally insulating pipe and sandwich pipe (filled with mineral wool). That is, there is an inner pipe wrapped in mineral wool, and this is covered with another pipe, of a larger diameter. However, this is unsafe, as it causes carbon monoxide to accumulate in the combustion chamber, which can lead to a real explosion and acute poisoning. The housing sector is looking towards modernizing buildings with green and sustainable materials that will not only conserve energy, but will drastically reduce the carbon footprints and various forms of greenhouse gas emissions.

KEYWORDS: Heating systems, Greenhouse gas emission, Housing sectors, Sustainability