DEBATE POWER


Are engineers overstating the benefits of district heating systems, as was claimed in a Journal article? No, say Peter Hamnett and Phil Jones, who argue the case for such energy networks


T 38 CIBSE Journal May 2012


he Department of Energy and Climate Change’s recently released document, Strategic Framework for Low Carbon Heat, notes in its


Executive Summary that ‘we use more energy for heating than for transport or the generation of electricity’. In that context, it is clear that the UK’s £33bn per annum demand for heat needs low carbon solutions to be implemented sooner rather than later. No single solution exists in isolation and the combination of reducing demands in tandem with improving the efficiency of heat supply has to be our goal. The article on combined heat and power (CHP) and district heating in the March


edition of the Journal (page 55) made much of the EU Cogeneration Directive’s methodology for calculating primary energy savings and its contrast with most emissions savings calculations. It is worth remembering, of course, that the Directive is intended to provide a perspective about the use of fuels by EU member states and is therefore quite removed in purpose from the well-established calculations for emissions savings (such as SAP and SBEM for Building Regulations or those undertaken as part of BREEAM assessments). It is therefore potentially unhelpful to suggest that building services professionals are somehow in the wrong for utilising the valid and well-understood calculation methodologies that are provided to them by law and which may be required of them by their clients. The aim in the current climate


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