Boilers Condensing technology
> onsite NOx emissions by 90 per cent compared with
installed standard-efficiency boilers. They will also cut
CO
2
emissions by as much as 50 per cent and deliver
substantial fuel bill savings to end-users.
“The secret is making it easy for people to replace their
boilers,” Northcott adds. “You can put condensing boilers
into exactly the same space as the old plant, which means
the customer’s carbon-saving pound goes further – they
are spending their money directly on reducing emissions
and not wasting it on extra pipework and fittings.”
Ironically, commercial boilers were not included
in the first draft of the EuP directive because the EU
initially set the threshold at products that sell more than
In Germany
200,000 units a year. Commercial boilers don’t reach Solar panels: a cost-effective way to reduce carbon footprints
the tariffs this figure, but are responsible for half of the carbon
were generous
emissions from buildings, so were brought into the Microgeneration alternatives like combined heat and
scope of the directive at the last minute. power (CHP) are developing and have real potential to
enough to help
replace boilers in many applications, but only a few
people offset the Marriage hundred micro-CHP systems have been fitted so far
cost of investing
Many manufacturers see the combination of condensing and the market will take several years to reach anything
boilers and solar thermal systems for hot water as the like critical mass.
in CHP so the
simplest and most viable way to cost-effectively reduce a Feed-in tariffs that guarantee CHP users a generous
market took building’s carbon footprint – and to meet the NOx provision price for excess electricity that they sell back to the grid
off. We could
of the EuP. But in the UK we fitted just 69,900 square could grow this market, but the UK government has not
metres of solar collectors in 2007, compared with more than been specific about when these will be introduced and
really do with
1.3 million sq m in Germany and 278,000 sq m in France. how generous they will be.
something This is a happy marriage between two low-carbon “In Germany this proved extremely positive for
here – Yan
technologies. There are a number of other combinations CHP,” Baxi’s Evans points out. “There, the tariffs
that have been tried with limited success, but this one is were generous enough to help people offset the cost of
Evans (above),
relatively easy to do and can cut annual hot water bills investing in CHP so the market took off. We could really
Baxi by an average of 25 per cent. do with something similar here.” l
Biofuels need local source
Delegates at the CIBSE seminar also discussed
the role of biomass and biofuel, which seem to be
developing into something of a niche heating market
that will always be held back by problems of supply.
It is not sustainable to ship a ‘low carbon’ fuel source
halfway around the world to meet demand, therefore
biomass will only develop on a long-term basis where
there is a healthy local source, the meeting heard.
The heat pump market will develop over time –
particularly the air-to-water types, thanks to their
relative ease of installation, but again our market
was only around 5,000 units in 2007 compared with
France’s 108,000, according to BSRIA.
The French market is very different because its
wider use of electric heating, due to its greater use
of nuclear power, makes it more receptive to heat
pumps – but we also remain well behind Germany.
In short, according to the experts at CIBSE’s
boiler seminar, our renewable and micro-generation
markets will mature slowly – particularly if the
Government gets it act together on incentives like
feed-in tariffs. In the shorter and medium term,
once the current financial storm abates, the high-
efficiency condensing boiler remains the key to
unlocking energy savings.
62 CIBSE Journal February 2009
www.cibsejournal.com
CIBSEfeb09pp58-62 boilers•.indd 62 5/2/09 17:43:10
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