Background
Heating buildings accounts for 25% of the UK’s energy demand and 15% of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Cost-effective GHG emission reductions are available for space heating via demand reduction and fabric energy efficiency, which reduce the residual heat demand that will have to be met by low-carbon heat sources.
High fabric energy efficiency is undoubtedly the best approach for new buildings: it maximises the time over which the measures can act, causes no disruption for occupants, and avoids the greater costs and disruption of future refurbishment. Ambitious improvements to fabric energy efficiency are challenging for many existing buildings, but should be considered wherever possible and affordable, because if major improvements are not made, the UK could be left with a residual heat demand that is too large to allow sufficient reductions in GHG emissions using available low-carbon heat sources. The UK would face an insurmountable back-log of retrofit projects, including to upgrade new buildings that have missed the opportunity to adopt leading practice from the start.
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Conclusions & Recommendations
To address the current slow rate of improvements (the “uptake gap”) the UK must aim for leading practice in new buildings, and must accelerate the deployment of retrofit solutions for existing buildings.
Increasing the uptake of improvements is not enough: experience has shown that when improvements are carried out, results are disappointing due to a combination of unrealistic expectations of the impacts (the “prediction gap”) and an under-delivery in actual performance (the “performance gap”).
New measures are needed to address these three gaps for space heating: these must be adopted in a pragmatic manner, without pursuing spurious precision or allowing “the best to become the enemy of the good”. Deployment must continue for measures that are known to bring benefits, even if exact impacts are uncertain; and early stages of deployment should be treated as a “safe learning environment”.
For retrofit quality, the Bonfield Review was commissioned to consider customer advice and protection, the standards framework, and monitoring and enforcement. For new-build, all customers already pay the costs for stipulated energy performance, but only some receive the intended benefits: the sector does not necessarily need more energy regulation, but rather more effective regulation through better use of monitoring, testing and enforcement.
We recommend actions to provide ambition and certainty in regulations for the building industry, new approaches to increase the appeal of retrofit to leverage customer interest, research to improve understanding of heat use in buildings, and better quality control and enforcement to deliver performance in practice.
- To guide buildings’ energy policies and regulations to be commensurate with the UK’s Carbon Budgets, a cross-departmental group should be established with membership from DCLG, BEIS, and relevant organisations (e.g. National Infrastructure Commission), aided by the establishment of an expert advisory panel.
- To provide ambition and certainty for the building industry, DCLG should produce a regulatory trajectory for building energy regulations that reaches leading performance in fabric thermal efficiency, and should maintain this trajectory.
- To leverage customer action on energy efficiency, DCLG should improve its use of light-touch regulations: Display Energy Certificates (DECs) should be applied to all public buildings and promoted for private buildings; Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) should be promoted more effectively as an important part of purchase and rental decisions.
- To increase uptake of retrofit solutions, product manufacturers and installers should better promote retrofit options and should develop more appealing products, installation methods and “retrofit packages”, with support from heritage groups for older buildings and with engagement from government for the development and implementation of policies.
- To increase understanding of thermal performance in buildings, the Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) should expand its network for access to test facilities and expertise to include tests of thermal performance, and should maintain its buildings trials as a longitudinal study and control group for other studies.
- To improve thermal performance in practice, product manufacturers should take a greater role in training and quality control in installation, and the building inspection regime should improve its use of tests and enforcement (better regulation, not necessarily more regulation) including conducting truly random spot checks of energy performance.
Follow-up activities
The report includes a number of actions that can be taken in support of the recommendations, and we will work with relevant organisations to identify opportunities to advance these actions.
The ERP’s Low-carbon Heat event on 11th October 2016 presented the ERP’s reports on Heating Buildings and The Potential Role of Hydrogen in the UK Energy System, and will introduce the ERP’s new project on Low-carbon Heat. This project is building on conclusions about heating options from the Buildings and Hydrogen projects to understand implementation issues for customers and utilities, and implications for energy systems. The event included perspectives from guest speakers and opportunities for attendees to contribute views on the priorities for the Low-carbon Heat project.
Steering Group
Project Chair:
- John Miles, Arup / Cambridge University
Steering Group (please note that some members have since moved from these organisations):
- Ron Loveland, Welsh Government
- Simon Hancock, Atkins
- Rufus Ford, SSE
- Simon Hyams, ETI
- Ben Westland, Scottish Enterprise
- Hunter Danskin, DECC
- Ken Bromley, DCLG
- Jeff Hardy, Ofgem
- Ute Collier, CCC
Further Information
Please contact Dr Simon Cran-McGreehin from the ERP Analysis Team.
Meeting the 2050 targets means the UK energy system will need to transition to low-carbon heat. Changes will be needed to how we heat our homes, buildings and industry. Supplying natural gas or oil directly into homes will need to be replaced by a decarbonised gas or by electric heating or heat network.
But it is not a simple choice: each option has challenges that could limit their deployment. A combination of options is likely to be required; no one option may not dominate, as natural gas currently does. Demand reduction will be an essential part of a cost-effective transition.
The scale of the challenge should not be underestimated. The social aspects are as challenging as the technical. The capital investment means the cost of heating will rise during the transition.
Timing is crucial. Preparations need to begin now, to inform the long investment cycles over the next 30 years.
Several low-carbon heating options need to be pursued in parallel now. Early in 2020s, critical actions and decisions will need to be taken, by Government, to avoid closing-off options, undermining their potential, or increasing their costs.
- Determining the extent to which hydrogen could be used to decarbonise the gas system, is critical. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will be essential.
- Government support for trials of key technologies is needed now.
- No and low-regrets options should be supported now.
- High efficiency standards for new-buildings need to be set and enforced.
- A robust retrofit energy efficiency programme for existing buildings.
Addressing the social aspects of the transition needs to be a priority and requires early engagement with the public, alongside the development and coordination of financial policies, incentives, regulations and business models.
- Engagement with the public will be crucial and needs to start now.
- A new narrative for heating and hot water, to recognise that costs will increase.
- Energy efficiency should be pursued to reduce the costs.
- Decide how to address the distributional impacts.
- Prioritise new financing mechanisms and market structures.
A long-term strategy to manage the transition, which engages with the public and coordinates the diverse range of parties, with a clear decision-making framework.
- Integrate decisions on heat with transport, industry and power generation.
- A heat delivery body to facilitate national, local and commercial decision making.
- Early engagement with the public will be crucial – as will a clear narrative
Project Events
The project’s report was launched at an event in October 2017. For more information, please contact Richard Heap.
A workshop on 18 July 2017 tested the analysis on the deployment potential and challenges of the various low-carbon heating options. Details of the workshop can be found here.
January 2017 ERP convened an industry workshop to explore the challenges of deploying heat pumps (see project outputs for a note of the meeting).
The low-carbon heat project was launched in October 2016 (more information is available on the event page).
Steering Group
- Carl Arntzen, Bosch Thermotechology (Steering Group Chair)
- Chris Jofeh, ARUP
- Steven Cowan, Atkins
- Olivia Absalom & Andy Davey, BEIS (observer)
- Joe Cosier & Simon Messenger, Energy Saving Trust
- Jeff Douglas, Energy Systems Catapult
- Sarah Deasley, Frontier Economics
- Mark Thompson, Innovate UK
- Janet Mather, National Grid, Gas SO
- Rufus Ford, SSE (seconded to BEIS)
- Kathleen Robertson, Scottish Government
- Keith MacLean, Independent / UKERC
- Ron Loveland, Welsh Government
- Amber Sharick, UKERC
Additional Sponsors
We would like to thank the following organisations for providing additional funding that allowed the project to run to completion. They also provided additional technical input and advice.
Bosch
Energy Saving Trust
Innovate UK
Cadent
Energy & Utilities Alliance EUA
BEIS
SGN
Institution of Gas Engineers & Managers IGEM
Background
Community energy can be broadly defined as energy projects in which local residents and businesses have a shared stake and are the main intended beneficiaries. Community energy has the potential to engage local communities in energy matters, with the aim of bringing two main benefits for the low-carbon transition: acceptance of change, and engagement with energy. Projects can also be methods of delivering other benefits for communities. Motivations include political objectives, local priorities, and some consumers’ desire for more control of their energy affairs.
The Energy Research Partnership (ERP) has produced a discussion paper on community energy in the UK. The paper presents examples of community energy in the UK and other countries, highlighting the motivations, benefits, costs and risks, and identifying challenges that community energy faces in the UK. Those challenges are grouped into: assessing outcomes, deploying projects, and delivering benefits. The paper considers how to improve the assessment of projects, and to improve the understanding of the role of community energy in the UK in order to determine whether its net impacts (and their distribution) justify addressing the challenges that it faces.
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Conclusions & Recommendations
- There are examples from around the UK and from other countries in which community energy has delivered benefits in the energy sector (public acceptance of change, and engagement with energy), as well as wider social benefits for communities.
- There is a need for improved assessment of projects in the UK, and improved understanding of community energy’s role in the UK in order to determine whether its costs and benefits (and their distribution) justify addressing the challenges that it faces. We recommend:
- improving assessment of projects, and providing guidance for decision makers;
- facilitating studies by providers of technology and services; and
- conducting studies to review existing projects, monitor new projects, and trial alternative arrangements for local energy.
- There are opportunities in the short-term to increase the uptake of projects (including for conducting studies) and to improve the delivery of expected benefits. We recommend:
- provision of tailored advice to project groups; and
- provision of opportunities to delegate administrative tasks.
Follow-up activities
We will work in autumn 2015 with community energy support groups, policy makers and research funders to progress our recommendations, focusing on the proposed research.
Steering Group
Steering Group chair:
- Naomi Luhde-Thompson, Friends of the Earth
Steering Group:
- Anna Wieckowska, Hitachi
- Laura Morris, ETI
- Christian Inglis, Innovate UK
- Chris Noyce, ESRC
- Fiona Booth, DECC
- Ron Loveland, Welsh Government
