Low-carbon heat

About 17% of the UK’s carbon emissions come from heating buildings, so we urgently need to switch to heating systems that don’t rely on oil, gas or coal.  For most homes, the answer will be a heat pump, which takes heat either from the air, the ground or a nearby water source. Heat pumps are an incredibly energy-efficient source of heat – they produce around 3 to 4 units of heat per unit of electricity, compared to 0.9 for a gas boiler. If you’ve got the money and space for an air-source heat pump, chances are it’s your best option (and you can get a £7,500 grant from the government).  

However, getting every single household in the UK to switch individually to a heat pump is going to be a slow and difficult job. For many areas of high-density terraced houses or flats, a heat network is likely to be a better solution. 

Heat networks are more efficient than systems that just heat a single home, meaning less heat is wasted. They are well-suited to using heat pumps – or they can make use of waste heat from industry, reducing the need to generate energy. 

Because they don’t require every home to have its own heat source, heat networks are also cost-effective and require less space in the home. So they could be a great solution for a lot of Norwich’s terraced housing and flats.