ECONOMIC REPORT 2013
66
b) Heat
It still remains notable how little of the energy
debate, in public at least, is about heat,
especially given the size of the heat sector in
this country. Gas dominates heating in Britain,
most particularly in the domestic and small
commercial sectors where individual boilers
are the preferred choice of providing heat.
According to National Grid’s
Future Energy
Scenarios
18
published in September 2012 , gas
demand for these purposes is declining as a
result of better insulated buildings and higher
efficiency boilers. These changes, while not
rapid, accumulate steadily as the years go by.
DECC published its heat strategy,
The Future
of Heating: meeting the challenge
19
, in
March 2013, having consulted on the matter
during the spring of 2012. It has divided
its strategy for this large subject into four
main categories:
• Efficient low carbon heat in industry
• Heat networks
• Heat and cooling for buildings
• Grids and infrastructure
The most important characteristic of heat is
the extent of the change in demand between
summer and winter. While industrial demand
for heat used in various production processes
is reasonably constant and predictable,
seasonal demand for heating (and cooling) in
domestic and commercial premises is almost
wholly weather dependent. During the winter
peak, demand for heat – mostly supplied by
gas in Britain – is about five times the demand
for electricity.
This simple multiplier gives a clear indication
of the scale of the transformation which
the government foresees, especially when
DECC’s strategy envisages the spread of heat
networks in towns and cities and greater
use of electricity in heating through air and
ground source heat pumps; in this regard, it
is worth noting that heat pumps perform best
in thermally efficient buildings. Furthermore,
increasing requirements for air conditioning in
commercial and, probably, domestic premises
in future will add to the demand for electricity
for heating and cooling.
The biggest difficulty lies in the lack of energy
efficiency in much of this country’s buildings
stock. Modern buildings to the latest standards
are part of the answer, but in the domestic
sector the turnover is slow (100+ years),
whereas in the large commercial sector it is
much faster and the opportunities to invest in
the latest technologies considerably greater.
According to National Grid’s
Future Energy
Scenarios
, the domestic insulation market will
start to saturate in the next ten years, with the
residual housing stock being much harder and
more expensive to treat. In like manner, the
replacement of older gas boilers with modern,
high efficiency ones – one of the simplest and
most beneficial changes which is being made
now – will have largely run its course by the
mid-2020s. Nonetheless, it is almost impossible
for an upgraded, older building to reach the
thermal efficiency standards of a new building.
It is likely, in our opinion, that effecting the
changes in the nation’s heat supplies implicit in
the four main categories listed above will require
substantial investment and will only happen
slowly. Therefore, gas will continue to play a
substantial role in providing heat for several
decades to come.
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See
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See
