HEAT PUMPS
Strengthening the case for district heating
By Lee Hermitage, EMEA marketing director for Honeywell Advanced Materials.
T
he summer months give us a temporary reprieve from high heating bills, much to the relief of
UK homeowners and building operators. However, with winter not too far away and Ofgem—the government regulator for electricity and gas markets—announcing plans to update the energy price cap more frequently, rises in heating bills remain a concern. Natural gas prices nearly tripled last heating season. More supply and price volatility certainly lies ahead as the global gas markets adjust to a number of variables that we are facing today including geopolitical issues, soaring demand, production limits and supply chain problems.
Meanwhile, the UK continues to shift away
from fossil fuels and toward greater reliance on sustainable energy sources like solar, wind and nuclear. The use of cleaner and greener energy is a huge part of the government’s decarbonisation plan to meet our 2050 net- zero CO2 emissions target. So is improving energy efficiency in homes and buildings. Reaching net-zero emissions means
16 July 2022 •
www.acr-news.com
addressing all sorts of energy-efficiency opportunities including space heating. Heating accounts for three-fourths of the energy used in a typical structure and produces one-third of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, according to government statistics. Leveraging renewable sources of energy
must remain a priority, but we also need to recognise that fossil fuels will continue to meet most of our energy needs for the foreseeable future. This underscores the need to find ways to heat UK homes and buildings using conventional sources of energy more efficiently. Progress has been made over the last decade and the total energy used for heating is down about 18% on average since 2011, but we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to realising the full potential of technology-enabled energy efficiency measures. Incremental improvements will not take us where we need to go to achieve our sustainability goals and make sure everyone can live, work and gather in buildings that are safe, comfortable and affordably heated.
Breaking the one-building, one-boiler paradigm As they have for decades, individual gas boilers provide central heating for 73% of UK homes and buildings, according to a Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy survey. While there have been some technology improvements to gas boilers over the years, even the most up-to- date boiler is not particularly energy efficient. Multiply that inefficiency by millions of boilers and the opportunity to improve energy performance by challenging the well-entrenched idea of “one building, one boiler” becomes apparent. There is enormous untapped potential to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by expanding the use of district heating networks, which provide pressurised hot water to multiple buildings from a centralised heating plant. District heating systems, which have been
around for 150 years, account for about 8.5% of global heat consumption. They are most often used in densely populated urban areas or to heat smaller groups of buildings, on a university or medical campus, for example. There are more than 17,000 district heating
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