Overview of National DHC Market

Overview of National DHC Market

Country

United Kingdom

Summary of the National DH market

Heat is an unregulated ‘commodity’ in the UK. The vast majority of heat delivery in the UK is by means of individual plant burning gas. There is also still significant production of heat by oil burning plant and direct heating by electricity storage heaters and panel heaters.

There are, however, some notable city-centre district heating schemes including those in Sheffield, Nottingham and Southampton. The government’s Community Energy programme (2001-7) also stimulated new schemes in the centre of Birmingham, and among residential blocks in Aberdeen, for example.

London has several localised networks, such as the Citigen scheme, Pimlico, Barkantine and the Whitehall scheme that serves 10 Downing Street. There are bold plans for district heating on a much bigger scale, using the waste heat from the 400MWe Barking Power Station to serve the Thames Gateway area. There are also significant networks that serve housing estates, particularly in South London where Southwark, for example has more than 20,000 district heated dwellings; these tend to be somewhat fragmented, however and often in need of modernisation.

It has been estimated that there are between 250,000 and 500,000 dwellings served by district heating. These numbers are, however, misleading because the definition of district (or community) heating is applied wherever more than one building and/or dwelling is served by a common energy centre. This means that a few flats served by a common boiler are included – often performing inefficiently and without the prospect to retrofit CHP.

Nevertheless, the benefits of district heating are becoming more widely understood among local and national policy makers. The examples cited above, together with notable systems in Woking and Lerwick among others, point the way to systems that deliver community energy efficiency in urban areas ranging from large cities to small towns, use readily available sources of waste heat, integrate sources of renewable energy and strengthen durable fuel flexibility.