Earth Notes: Pint, Poster, Paper: Slice-and-Dice Heating Decarb (2026)

I was encouraged to do a second Pint of Science public talk, for May 2026. I picked a topic on the spur of the moment that I thought should be interesting. The organisers entitled the slot The Future of Home Heating and a Greener UK. The talk's published blurb/abstract was:

Heating our homes creates around 15% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, so most of us will eventually switch to heat pumps. But there's a twist: while heat pumps are great for the planet, they could double peak electricity demand—right when our increasingly renewable grid is at its most unpredictable. So how do we keep the lights on and the carbon down? In this lively talk, discover why flexible energy use is essential, how it strangely resembles financial derivatives trading, and the simple actions you can take tomorrow to support a cleaner, smarter grid—even if you're still using a trusty old gas boiler.

See the slides [PDF]

The "help the grid even with a gas boiler" item was to have your heating scheduled to be off maybe an hour either side of 18:00, which is peak winter domestic demand. The grid will be relieved of the load of your boiler's circulation pump, which is not huge but it is not nothing: the entire grid has to be sized and costed to cover that peak.

I thought that I could try to extend this to be a bit more formal, and present it at my university's internal PGR/ECR (Post Graduate Researcher / Early Career Researcher) conference.

I was accepted for a poster presentation, which I have not done before!

See the (A0!) poster [PDF].

For a future poster I would want to improve the story telling so it works if I am not present to explain. But I had interesting discussions as-was!

It took the best part of a month to (in tandem with the poster) bring the work up to be a plausible academic journal paper, from that throw-away 30-second Pint-of-Science thought!

2026-06-11: submitted

I submitted a journal article Grid Flex Rhymes With Derivatives Trading: an Observation to a journal that I had not seen before, nominally for a special edition.

According to the journal's process and timings, if my paper is accepted, it may take until October to be published.

2026-07-06: one review

As of today the on-line progress tracker shows: One reviewer has reviewed your manuscript

IN PROGRESS