comprehensive supply chains. Combine this with measures to raise awareness and boost demand for the technologies, and this exciting industry will reach its potential in the near term and can become self-sustaining in the long term.


Heat networks


As well as individual installations serving single users, one installation can serve several users as part of a heat network. This makes most sense in an area where there is a concentration of users such as industrial sites or the centres of towns and cities.


There are a number of examples of this in the UK, although heat networks are more widespread in several European countries. There are opportunities for dramatically improved fuel efficiency


by generating both heat and power - with lower heating costs and greenhouse gas emissions as a result. Fossil or renewable fuels can be used.


Heat networks are naturally more complex to develop than individual installations, so they tend to take some time to be developed, usually building outwards from a central core. In towns and cities, local government will play a key role. DECC has set up a delivery unit to help projects at early stages, but there is clearly a greater role for the public sector in helping networks fulfil their potential - not least in the longer-term approach required to fund infrastructure projects with long lifetimes. Greater incentives to encourage new developments to connect to local heat networks would also be needed.


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