In the move to a renewable future, heating has sometimes been overlooked – but is the subject hotting up?
With gas, the dominant source of home heating for the majority of the country over the past few decades, still readily available and relatively cheap, the move to other sources of heat has been slow.
UK district heating schemes are still few and far between and not all have been a success.
And yet, managing heat – reducing its use and decarbonising what is left – could be one of the fastest ways to transition to a greener economy, say both the UK and Scottish governments.
To help reduce and manage demand, the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) in April announced a £100million five-year scheme with Japanese firm Hitachi to develop a smart energy system it is hoped would be a UK first.
Its aim is to help to manage demand for consumers but also suppliers and producers.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) also issued The Future of Heating report – a consultation on its heating strategy closing May 24.
Its aims are to reduce demand for energy in buildings and to decarbonise that which is still required, with suggestions ranging from use of smart metering and better management of demand, as in the ETI initiative, to replacing natural gas with biomethane and hydrogen in existing grid networks.
DECC has also published a National Heat Map, following a Scottish pilot program, in a bid to show where district heating schemes could be viable – a move welcomed by the UK District Energy Association (UKDEA).
However, delays to the introduction of the RHI for domestic properties by the UK Government have prompted fierce criticism from industry.
The UK Government has an ambition to have 1.2million heat pumps installed by 2020, but this has been described as a pipedream without the domestic RHI.
Duncan Burt, customer services manager at the National Grid, said it would be 2040 before many people have non-gas heating as their primary heating and so insulation efficiency was critical.
The Scottish Government has a target of getting 11% heat demand from renewables by 2020. It says 2.8% of heat demand is already being met from renewables, but says the challenge remains “significant”.
It has been looking at the potential to recover heat from four large-scale fossil power stations using coal and gas, with some co-firing of biomass. It also has plans to set up an expert commission into the development of district heating.
The challenges are that for district schemes there needs to be a critical mass of demand to justify initial costs – leading to plans for slightly less efficient combined heat and power plants.
The Scottish Government has also pointed to the need to use fuels optimally. Woody biomass deployed for heating is 90% efficient, whereas for combined heat and power plants it is 50-70% efficient, it says. Electricity-only generation is 30% efficient.
According to DECC:
Gas is the current source of 80% of the UK’s total domestic and industrial heating requirements.
Heating is responsible for a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2012, the UK will spend about £33billion on heating.
Almost half (46%) of the final energy consumed in the UK is used to provide heat. The rest is for transport (41%) and electricity for lighting and appliances (8%) and other uses.
Nearly 80% of the energy we use in homes is for space and hot water heating.
Heat from renewable sources grew 17% in 2010 – mostly through biomass – but still only accounted for 1% of heat generation in the UK last year.
About 170,000 homes are currently on heat networks.
The average internal temperature of homes has risen 6% since the 1970s.
