Stationary Applications

Renewables play an important role in providing energy services in stationary applications in industry and buildings (residential and services/commercial). Current use of fossil fuels in the sector must be addressed to avoid implications of climate change.

Many options, including biomass, solar thermal and heat pumps can be competitive for process heating, space and water heating, and cooling. There are also significant opportunities to replace traditional biomass use with modern biomass technologies or alternative energy sources. Forthcoming work by IRENA will document the costs and performance of solar thermal heat for commercial and industrial processes and residential heat pumps.

Solar thermal use for commercial and industrial applications remains modest, but where policy support has encouraged deployment and economies of scale, costs have fallen. For instance, in Denmark, solar thermal system costs for district heating fell from USD 573/kW in 2010 to USD 409/kW in 2019. That represented a learning rate the percentage cost reduction for every doubling of cumulative installed capacity) of 17%, slightly higher than that of onshore wind between 2010 and 2020.