  Space and water heating accounts for about 40% of final energy consumption in
the European Union and thus plays a key role in reducing overall costs and
greenhouse gas emissions. Many scenarios to reach net-zero emissions in
buildings rely on electrification, but meeting the heat demand peaks in the
winter can be challenging, particularly when wind and solar resources are low.
This paper examines how to mitigate space heating demand peaks most
cost-effectively in a top-down, sector-coupled model with carbon dioxide
emissions constraint to be net-zero. It introduces the first model that
co-optimises both supply and efficiency simultaneously including all European
countries with hourly resolution. The competition between technologies to
address these heating peaks, namely building retrofitting, thermal energy
storage and individual hybrid heat pumps with backup gas boilers is examined. A
novel thought experiment demonstrates that the level of building renovation is
driven by the strong seasonal heat peaks, rather than the overall energy
consumption. If all three instruments are applied, total costs are reduced by
up to 17%. Building renovation enables the largest benefit with cost savings of
up to 14% and allows individual gas boilers to be removed from the energy
system without significant higher costs.
