What is the climate impact of a Rotaheater Pico?

Rotaheat knows that both the Rotaheater Pico and the Rotaheater Micro demonstrate outstanding performance.  Our knowledge is based on evidence resulting from extensive testing under a variety of conditions intended to simulate what you might face.  But what is the climate impact of a Rotaheater?

There is no doubt that decarbonising our energy usage, and reducing our climate impact, will become more challenging.  In some areas there are simple solutions, e.g., switch to an electricity supplier committing to deliver electricity from renewable sources.  In other areas, such as to decarbonise our heating needs, there may be limited practical alternatives without changing behaviours or energy systems.

But how do you forecast the climate impact of changing, maybe by adopting a new product? A simple question, complicated by needing to understand the impact across a product’s life that stretches from cradle to grave.  Understanding the cradle to grave impact requires deep understanding of a supply chain from digging materials out of the ground, producing and distributing the product, operating the product and disposing of the product.  This need to take a total life-cycle view makes it hard to judge which product has the least climate impact.  The climate impact is not always obvious. As a challenge, does fresh broccoli or fresh lettuce have the lower climate impact? And does solar PV or nuclear power have the lower climate impact? The answers are below.

Rotaheat considered this, with the support of EIT Climate-KIC and Impact Forecast, by comparing the climate impact of a Rotaheater Pico powered by a water wheel against a conventional boiler powered by gas.  The analysis is startling.  Both solutions carry out the same function, delivering about 98,000kWh of heat and meet the typical demand of 4-5 homes.

How each solution delivers the function leaves a markedly different climate impact.  Both solutions leave an impact; various metals are mined, processed and transported and needing to be disposed of.  The material difference is during use.  Natural gas consumed by the boiler annually emits 22,799kgCO2e with the Rotaheater Pico directly emitting zero emissions.

Annually, the emissions associated with gas boiler are about 22,754kgCO2e more than a Rotaheater Pico.  According to Impact Forecast the Rotaheater Pico provides a “significant and positive impact”.

Climate Impact Forecast

Verified by Impact Forecast

To put that climate impact into perspective, 100 installations incorporating a Rotaheater Pico would result in the annual equivalent of:

  • avoiding cars driving a distance the equivalent to around the world 281 times, or
  • flying 22,986 fewer passengers between New York and London, or
  • converting 956 EU households to using renewable electricity.

We think that is quite an impact, all without changing your heat usage or behaviour.

But what is the impact of the larger Rotaheater Micro?  Contact Us to find out.

And the answers? fresh broccoli and nuclear power.  According to Impact Forecast, fresh broccoli has an impact of 0.6 kgCO2e while fresh lettuce  has an impact of 3.4kgCO2e.  By comparison per 100MJ of energy produced, solar PV contributes 1.9kgCO2e compared with nuclear power contributing 0.3kgCO2e.