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News & Views From the Front Line
Friday, 8 May 2009
A new start for district heating?
According to the ENDS report, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has commissioned a report on district heating in the UK, which accounts for just 2% of heat demand. It recommends the government intervene as district heating is “the preferred option for achieving carbon reduction in built up areas”. If a scheme was powered by waste heat from a power station, it would save carbon dioxide at a cost of £50 per tonne. This compares to over £150/t for solar thermal units and over £500/t for ground source heat pumps.This is music to my ears. If you've been reading this blog for long you'll know it's a hobby horse of mine.
In this country we simply let two thirds of the fossil fuel energy we put into our electricity generation system fly up into the sky (or out into the sea). So much of this could be used to heat homes, public buildings, offices and factories at zero additional carbon and there is loads of it. 60% of Denmark's heat load is delivered through district heating.
We did a project in 2007 mapping potential heat users around a proposed power station in the North of England and found a good network of public buildings around which to base a commercially viable system. There are a number of CHP based district heating schemes like the establish one in Southampton and the new one in Birmingham. So there are green shoots in this area and Government investment would be very welcome.
Labels: district heating, waste heat recovery
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:41
0 Comments
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Weekly Tip #15: Cold Comfort
This is the fifteenth in a series of tips extracted from the forthcoming Green Business Bible e-book:If you have cold rooms/refrigerators, make sure doors are alarmed so staff are alerted if they are left open. You can also improve the efficiency of refrigeration compressors and get free hot water with a simple heat exchanger.
Another tip next Monday!
Labels: refrigeration, tips, waste heat recovery
# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:29
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Monday, 4 February 2008
What is Heat?
An interesting juxtaposition of headlines on edie last week:On Thursday: Academic blasts Government's green construction rules
On Friday: Government wants tips on 'renewable' heating
Maybe Jo Williams, the academic in question, had an extraordinarily fast response to her 'blast'! Joking aside, if you do want to contribute to the Government's heat query you can at the BERR website here. I may just point out that the total heating demand is roughly the same as the amount of waste heat from electricity generation (although unfortunately the UK's population isn't concentrated around Drax, Ferrybridge etc).
Fortunately you don't have to answer the rather tricky question at the top of the BERR webpage: "What is Heat?". Answers on the back of a postcard/in the comments, please - the winner will be the wittiest, not the most pedantic.
Labels: district heating, eco-building, space heating, waste heat recovery
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:26
1 Comments
Monday, 3 December 2007
Why don't we do district heating in the UK?
I was giving a presentation on Sustainable Construction on Friday to a group of Local Authority energy managers. I mentioned Kalundborg in Denmark where the entire town is heated using 'waste' heat from the local coal fired power station. From the conversation afterwards it turned out that many towns in the North East of England used to have district heating, but that most had be ripped out, not because of cost or performance, but because people just preferred to have their own central heating system. This is a real shame as the heat lost from our electricity generation almost exactly matches the heat demand from domestic homes, which in turn is responsible for a whopping 28% of the country's carbon footprint.This prejudice seems to be continuing. I've just been commissioned to do a scoping study for using waste heat, but the client has specified that I exclude domestic developments because they've drawn a complete blank so far. Only in Southampton does a district heating system using a combination of geothermal energy and combined heat and power seem to have taken off in recent years.
I can only assume the prejudice is based on security of supply. But, hold on, in my house there's only one gas connection and combi boiler - if that goes down we're cold. In district heating systems there's a back-up boiler, and if that fails, we'd no worse off than with the gas. Plus hot water arriving in our house would always be safer than gas. Given the opportunity, I'd sign up in a flash!
So why don't we do district heating?
Labels: district heating, industrial symbiosis, waste heat recovery
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:59
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
