With household bills in the UK which tipped £3,800 this winter, many experts have blamed the country’s reliance on expensive fossil fuels as a major reason for this price hike. To speed up the transition from natural gasbased boilers in energy efficient home heating solutions such as heat pumps, the government will provide an additional £54 million in funding to support the delivery of clean energy up to 28,000 homes and businesses.
This support package will boost the development of schemes in London, Bedfordshire and Woking that use low-carbon heat sources such as heat pumps and energy from waste to warm properties.
Aside from saving Brits from high gas bills, these schemes will increase the UK’s energy independence so that the country is not dependent on the price and supply shocks like the ones Europe is facing from Russia.
The cash injection will enable the projects to develop and complete the construction of networks that will supply energy to households and commercial sites, including shops, offices and public buildings.
Minister for Affairs and Energy Lord Callanan said: “These projects will change the way tens of thousands of households and businesses keep their properties warm.
“By investing in advanced low-carbon heating technologies, we are helping to achieve a sustainable shift from fossil fuel use and protect consumers from the costs that drive up energy bills at a time of high global prices.”
A heat network is a distribution system of insulated pipes that extracts heat from a central source, such as large-scale heat pumps or heat recovered from industry, from a number of homes or non-domestic buildings.
About half of the funding will go to Haringey London Borough Council as it will receive £27.8 million in funding for two heat network projects – Wood Green District Heating Network and the Tottenham Hale and Broadwater Farm district heating network.
Together, these projects will provide heat to nearly 10,000 homes after construction.
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Collectively, the government has allocated more than £250 million in similar aid since 2018, which will help households and businesses in the regions access low-carbon heating.
Heat networks are uniquely able to unlock otherwise unattainable large-scale renewable and recovered heat sources, such as large rivers and industrial heat.
This allows them to lower their bills, support local regeneration and provide a cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions from heating, while increasing energy security.