The sudden escalation of the crisis in Ukraine has led to another surge in rising gas prices. In addition to the safety of Ukrainian civilians, there is also a natural gas pipeline through Ukraine, which is connected to Russia, the country with the world's largest natural gas reserves, and the European Union, the largest export market of Russian natural gas, on the other hand, becoming the "throat" of European energy. As the situation in Russia and Ukraine escalated, Europe and the United States announced sanctions against Russia, and Europeans' panic about energy shortages intensified, European gas prices soared by 36% at one point, and as of February 28, the Dutch TTF benchmark natural gas futures price rose to more than 113.7 euros / MWh.
Last year, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the global natural gas supply was seriously in short supply, and the european natural gas price rose by 729% in the year. Under the influence of the sharp deterioration of the situation in Russia and Ukraine, the price of natural gas has soared again, and the energy crisis in Europe and even the world has been exposed.
On February 26, the United States, together with the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada, issued a statement announcing a ban on Russia's use of the Global Interbank Financial Telecommunications Association (SWIFT) International Settlement System. This "financial nuclear bomb" will cause tens of millions of families in Europe to be "unable to heat" in winter. Experts from the Oxford Institute of Energy said that if the West excludes Russia from SWIFT, Russian gas suppliers will not be able to collect payments, and Russia's supply cuts are more likely. The contradiction between supply and demand of natural gas will inevitably lead to price loss of control, leaving ordinary residents "no gas available" or "unaffordable".
Many European countries enter the heating season in October every year, such as Norway, which has up to 6 months of extremely cold weather every year, and the energy consumed by winter heating is an important energy consumption in addition to industrial energy. After entering the heating season last year, European gas stocks fell to their lowest level in a decade. After the Ukraine crisis, EU Energy Commissioner Simson said on March 1: Regarding gas storage rules, we cannot start the next heating season as we are now.
In fact, Europe has long been prepared for the real dilemma of being clamped down by natural gas. Gas wall-hung furnace heating, which uses natural gas as an energy source, originated in Europe 100 years ago, but it has also become the first form of heating to be abandoned in Europe. On the one hand, this is affected by resource endowments; on the other hand, in response to the "carbon neutral" energy conservation and carbon reduction target, Europeans need to use clean renewable energy for heating to help the green and low-carbon transformation of energy. In recent years, European countries have begun to completely ban some low-energy-efficient gas wall-hung furnaces, some countries have completely stopped using wall-hung furnace products, and even consider legislation to prohibit civil residential laying of natural gas pipelines. In Germany, Norway, Denmark and other countries, heat pump floor heaters with electricity as energy have become the mainstream new heating methods in the local area.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) pointed out in the "Global Energy Industry Net Zero Emissions Roadmap 2050" released in May 2021 that electricity will become the main consumer of final energy. To achieve the 2050 net zero emissions target, more than half of the world's building heating needs will be provided by cleaner, more energy-efficient heat pump floor heaters, which will have a total installed capacity of more than 1.8 billion heat pumps worldwide.
In the realization of energy transition substitution, the heat pump floor heater uses a small amount of electrical energy and heat energy in the air as energy, which not only reduces the dependence on fossil fuels such as natural gas, but also has no toxic and harmful pollutant emissions during operation, protects the atmospheric environment, and also reduces safety hazards such as gas explosion and carbon monoxide poisoning. In the future, whether in Europe or in the global market, with the large-scale development and application of green electricity, heat pump floor heating machines are expected to become a more "people-friendly" heating method.