Earth Notes: On the APPGIE meeting - Taking the Carbon out of Heat (2017)

These are cut and pasted mainly from my Twitter stream. I have made some very light edits. Also see hashtag #CarbonOutOfHeat, and handle @appgie. Note that the hero image is courtesy of @appgie.

Meeting Description

This event will look at how to decarbonise the 20% of emissions that comes from heating the UK's 28 million homes. A Policy Exchange report last year, 'Too Hot to Handle' highlighted that the previous Government's plan to decarbonise heating by fitting electric heat pumps in most homes by 2050 would cost about £300 billion. All in all costing as much as £12,000 per household to deliver the plans to reduce carbon emissions from domestic heating. Before 2050 around 26 million homes will each require new low carbon installations — the equivalent of ten Milton Keynes' each year. This event will explore options on how to do this in a cost effective and timely manner. It will be difficult to meet our renewable generation targets, let alone our decarbonisation targets, without looking at the carbon impacts of our heat use. We need to apply the same effort to decarbonising heat as has been applied to electricity.

Chair: Peter Aldous MP

Speakers:

• Neil Schofield, Head of Sustainable Development, Worcester Bosch
• Dr Tim Rotheray (@trotheray), Director, The Association for Decentralised Energy
• Dave Pearson, Director, Star Renewable Energy
• Andrew Haslett, Chief Engineer, Energy Technologies Institute
• Jenny Hill (@Jenny_C_Hill), Head of Buildings, Industry and Bioenergy, Committee of Climate Change

Tweet Notes

Includes some minor edits for fumble-fingered typos while tweeting.

• Jenny Hill of CCC says 23M UK homes on gas grid.
• Jenny Hill on heat pumps £300bn CapEx bill but defanged by OpEx and other benefits such as energy security. Cost of kWh heat similar for heat pump and gas now.
• [Cost of kWh of *heat* from electricity with heat pump can already be lower than gas with half-decent CoP.]
• Tim Rothersay says heat is bad or boring: customers just want to be kept warm at a price.
• Gov says ~20% of heat should be on district heat.
• District heat works best in dense urban areas.
• UK district heat costs higher than eg Germany and France and regulations weak compared to gas and electricity.
• [TR says RHI model wrong (and he helped design it) because heating is distress purchase not business investment. Talking HaaS!]
• Dave Pearson talking about river source heat pumps.
• Points out that fossil fuel imports increasingly bad for balance of trade never mind CO2.
• Maybe PAYG heat pumps part of solution, already happening in Austria. Maybe #HaaS baby steps?
• Update SAP with current electricity carbon intensity [else perverse incentives to do the wrong things].
• Andrew H of ETI talking about domestic retrofit.
• Balance between building efficiency and fuel carbon intensity.
• Significant defects in existing housing stock.
• Comfort may be more important than payback in many cases.
• Some simple supply issues to fix such as SRMHRV pipes long enough to get through fatter properly insulated wall!
• Answering Qs: 1.6M gas boiler sales per year in UK, and biggest market in world.
• NS suggests all new build should get heat pumps. What about balance of gas boiler sales over current 18k heat pump sales?

  @TerraThermaLtd replied:

  He didn't seem keen to erode his market share of gas boilers! New builds are already very [efficient] and obvious choices for heat pumps but developers want change as it effects their bottom line. Old housing stock is where the big carbon will be saved, not a 3kW new build 2 bed

• Everyone furiously agreeing on #HaaS and improved controls.
• Also should aspire to CoP of 4 for heat pumps.
• Lots of talk about hybrid e+g heating, ie small heat pump plus gas to cover peak demand. But cannot do CCS with 23M natural gas boilers.