In a unique installation project for Kensa Contracting, the historic Taff’s Well – Wales’ only thermal spring – was used as a heat source for heat pump systems in Ffynnon Taf Primary School and the pavilion at Taff’s Well Bowling Club, near Cardiff. Kensa designed a complex but effective open loop water source system and oversaw innovative horizontal drilling solutions in the installation of the underground pipework.
Kensa’s networked heat pump solution ensured that 14 new homes created by Lar Housing Trust in the Fountainbridge area of central Edinburgh have a reliable, renewable heat source.
The housing charity commissioned Kensa Contracting to install ground source heat pumps connected to a shared ground array of boreholes.
Octopus Energy’s generation arm and Legal & General Capital are turbocharging Britain’s heat pump rollout by investing £70 million in the country’s leading manufacturer and installer of ground source heat pumps, The Kensa Group.
This marks the biggest investment ever made in ground source tech in Britain. It will allow Kensa to rapidly expand and install 50,000 ground source heat pumps a year by 2030. The move will drive down costs of heat pumps and reduce reliance on polluting gas boilers.
CEO Dr. Matthew Trewhella and COO James Standley of The Kensa Group, say: “This is a monumental moment for ground source heat pumps.”
The UK is targeting 600,000 heat pump installations a year by 2028 as part of wider efforts to decarbonise the heating industry and realise its net-zero ambitions. Unlocking investment through deals like this will help rapidly grow the country’s heat pump industry, meet net zero targets and deliver jobs. Kensa expects its growth to create more than 7,000 green jobs in the UK by 2030.
By harnessing freely available heat energy in the ground or water, electrically powered ground source heat pumps work like a fridge in reverse. They produce around four units of clean heat for every one unit of electricity they consume, making them much more efficient than gas boilers. They’re recognised by the Government as a key solution to tackling heating emissions and weaning the country off gas.
This investment will make heat pumps even more accessible to more properties, including retrofits for social housing, terraced housing, and non-domestic buildings. As part of the deal, finance will be provided to offer house builders, housing associations, and non-domestic customers Kensa’s ‘Networked Heat Pumps’ solution at a lower cost. This effectively creates a new renewable energy asset class – kick-starting growth towards a sector that could exceed £1bn by 2030.
Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation, said:
The heat pump revolution is off to a flying start: it’s a tried and tested replacement for gas boilers and can drive down consumers’ energy bills for good. Backing Kensa will help rapidly expand Britain’s fast-growing ground source heat pump economy. This is a huge milestone for our exciting new energy transition fund, as we invest in ambitious companies rolling out tech to turbocharge the clean energy shift.
Dr Matthew Trewhella, CEO of The Kensa Group, said:
This is a monumental moment for ground source heat pumps. This investment will help unlock Kensa’s vision of a mass transition to low carbon heating by replacing the gas grid with its 21st-century equivalent – an ambient temperature heat network. Our approach harnesses the power of investment capital funding infrastructure, reduces the strain on our electricity grid and enables a just transition – keeping heating costs low and addressing fuel poverty simultaneously with climate change mitigation. We’re extremely proud to partner with Octopus Energy and Legal & General Capital who show incredible leadership in bringing about our low carbon energy future.
John Bromley, Managing Director – Clean Energy, at Legal & General Capital, said:
Legal & General Capital continues to invest in leading energy transition businesses capable of delivering significant economic, social, and environmental benefits for our economy. LGC first partnered with Kensa in April 2020 with the shared aim of scaling up the deployment of ground source heat pumps in the UK through their long-term solution that is highly efficient and reliable. Since our initial investment, they have grown quickly, opening a new factory and delivering some prestigious new-build and retrofit installations across the UK. We are delighted to make our third significant investment in Kensa together with Octopus Energy, recognising the significant role Kensa can play in reducing UK dependence on natural gas through a transition to low-carbon heating.
This latest Kensa deal heralds Octopus Energy Group’s entry into the ground source heat pump market and builds on Octopus’ existing air-source heat pump expertise. Octopus’ R&D centre is leading the way in creating a thriving renewable heating economy, from training, engineering, and installation.
Octopus Energy Generation – which manages £6bn of renewable assets and energy transition projects – makes this investment as the first deal from its new £500m Octopus Energy Transition Fund (OETF), which is currently raising capital from investors.
OETF includes a cornerstone investment from Wandsworth Pension Fund. It is backing companies rolling out technologies decarbonising the economy, with projects in the pipeline globally in storage, grid and low carbon transport, green hydrogen, and e-fuels.
The investment, which is subject to applicable regulatory approval, is expected to complete in the third quarter of 2023.
Kensa would like to thank our Corporate Financial Advisors, PMB Capital and EcoPragma Capital LLP, and our legal team at Tozers and Lux Nova.
Longhurst Group are installing ground source heat pumps into their new affordable housing development in Cambridgeshire. The project utilised funding from Kensa Utilities and used Kensa Contracting for the project delivery.
The new study by Element Energy used one of the most robust models of heat pump performance under real-life conditions, specifically taking into account British weather patterns, geology, topography and climate.
It is also the first study to provide real-world cost models for networked heat pump scenarios where the cost of the heat pump unit is separated from the cost of the ground array.
It concludes that networked heat pumps are the optimal solution, compared to air source heat pumps and central plant district heating, to meet the UK’s ambitious decarbonisation goals for the lowest overall cost, due to their superior performance and ability to be rolled out at scale in a way that mimics the existing gas grid.
Key takeaways:
Link to the full study here.
Below, Kensa Utilities Managing Director Wouter Thijssen explores some of the pioneering report’s key highlights, and what this can mean for the mass rollout of heat pumps.
Millions of households across the UK need to stop burning stuff
Heating the country’s buildings accounts for 23% of UK emissions – more than that of cars!
To reach net zero, all 28 million gas boilers installed in the UK’s households need to switch to low carbon heating, . That’s 20,000 a week between now and 2050!
Heat pumps are widely regarded as the front-running technology for decarbonising heat due to their exceptional proven efficiency. As we transition off gas it will be commonplace to see a heat pump per house, just as with a boiler per house today; this supports the UK government’s ambition for 600,000 heat pumps to be installed every year from 2028. For the densest areas in the UK, they’ll feed centrally-powered district heating networks, which will represent up to 20% of homes, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Ground source and air source heat pumps are the two leading forms of heat pumps. Given the scale of the challenge, both types will play a massive role in getting us to net zero.
The opportunities and challenges of ground source heat pumps
To date, air source heat pumps also the most common form of heat pump in the UK (but not in countries like Sweden or Germany, where ground source is most common – (Source: EHPA 2021 Market Report).
Ground source heat pumps are the most efficient. On a typical winter day with your heating on, a ground source heat pump takes in absorbed solar heat stored up to 300 metres underground at 8-12*C and feeds it to the heat pump. This means it does a lot less work to upgrade it to your 35-55C heating temperature than an air source heat pump that takes air in at 0C or less, making it a lot cheaper to run.Ground-source heat pumps typically achieve efficiencies over 400% (source: Evo TIS), whereas air-source deployments to date average 280% (Source: Energy Systems Catapult).
Being inside away from the elements means ground source heat pumps have fewer maintenance requirements, and also last much longer than air source heat pumps. Element Energy assumes an air source heat pump lasts 15 years and a ground source heat pump lasts 25 years.
So, ground source heat pumps are cheaper to run, require less maintenance, and have a longer life – what’s the catch? The two barriers that have always held back ground-source have been upfront cost and disruption: the extra upfront cost for putting in the ground arrays that gather that efficient heat from boreholes 150m – 300m underground, and the disruption of having the ground arrays installed.
The ground is the key to unlocking net zero with heat pumps
Think back to the gas network today. You do not pay upfront for the gas pipes in your street, nor do you have the disruption of putting them in yourself. A utility does this, and you pay a standing charge to access it. You just plug in your gas boiler.
Networked heat pumps emulate this for ground source heat pumps. A utility will fund and roll out this ground array infrastructure for your street, you just pay a standing charge to connect to it and access the free heat it absorbs. Now all you do is get a ground source heat pump for your house, which at scale will be cheaper than an air source heat pump (as the ground source heat pump doesn’t have additional components such as fans or extra equipment for external weatherproofing), and without the disruption of having to drill your own boreholes or dig trenches in your garden.
Two barriers removed. This is then a networked heat pump.
Networked heat pumps are the 21st-century equivalent of the gas grid. Ground arrays last over 100 years; they are buried, making them entirely unobtrusive. Boreholes can be linked together in a network that is scalable and perfectly suited to large-scale installations.
The Element Energy report confirms: “This model can be made commercially viable through economies of scale: designing and installing large-scale ground infrastructure to serve many properties simultaneously.” – EE pg 20
What used to be considered the most expensive heating system choice is now the cheapest. It also mimics the arrangements consumers are familiar with today through the gas network.
Proving networked heat pumps have lower overall costs
At scale, networked heat pumps have a 20% lower annualised cost compared to an air source heat pump, and a lower upfront cost, according to models by Element Energy.
3-bed Victorian terraced properties are the most common UK housing type – consuming 15,700kWh/yr. Upfront capital costs are roughly 8% (£900) lower, and annual running costs are 18% (£290/year) lower for scaled deployment of networked heat pumps. The latter is as the fuel costs and annualised capital expenditure is significantly lower for a ground source heat pump, which creates headroom to absorb the standing charge (to access the infrastructure in the street) while still ensuring a saving. The assumed cost advantages for networked heat pumps in this example can be broken down as follows:
The same drivers as above apply for the 3-bed newbuild case, where at scale upfront capital costs are 9% (£500) lower and running costs 16% (£115/year) lower.
This was based on hour-by-hour modelling of ground source heat pump and air source heat pump performance in British Weather (Leeds) and British building types (3-bed Victorian terrace & 3-bed newbuild). Combining this with data from the UK National Energy Efficiency Database (NEED), this is one of the most robust heat pump modelling studies on UK buildings to date.
Similar results are found in Aurora’s report – Decarbonisation of Heat in Great Britain, finding networked heat pumps costing less than air source heat pumps.
Modelling the coldest day of the year
Element Energy were also able to model the coldest day impact using the highly robust hour-by-hour modelling tool. This is crucial for determining the grid impact of heat pumps.
Based on 2010, the coldest winter in the past 20 years, we see the resilience of depending on stable below ground temperatures for our heating, rather than the air. While the ground will cool down in a colder winter, this effect isn’t nearly as pronounced as the cooling of the air. With these being the respective sources for ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps, we see that air source heat pump running costs rise by £267/year whereas ground source heat pumps just £99/year.
This has significant grid implications, with upgrades needed to ensure the grid can meet peak demand. Aurora’s study mentioned above concluded that with networked ground source heat pumps you see a massive £40bn system cost savings to 2050 (relative to a more air source heat pump-heavy scenario), which ultimately trickles down to lower electricity bills once again.
Networked heat pumps are a key part of the jigsaw
We know that there is no silver bullet for decarbonising heating – different house types and regions will favour different solutions. We expect a mixture of individual air and ground source heat pumps, networked heat pumps and central-plant district heating to dominate the decarbonisation of heating. The key is to have an area-based approach (known as zoning), rather than a house-by-house approach, as each technology requires infrastructure deployment: grid upgrades especially for air source heat pumps, ground arrays for networked heat pumps, and district heating pipes for central plant district heating.
In theory, as networked heat pumps mimic the gas grid, they can work on 85% of UK homes currently on the gas grid. A Regen study similarly modelled 80% suitability. The sweet spot for networked heat pumps includes the two house types modelled above: terraced housing and newbuild, as well as flats and densely-distributed semi-detached homes. The University of Leeds did some great work illustrating this (here):
What is the best type of heating for different locations?
In city centres and the densest urban settings, central plant district heating is probably the favoured solution. For less densely populated areas an individual air or ground source heat pump is likely the favoured solution. Having a ground array connecting these more sparsely spread houses does limit the economies of scale benefit you get.
This leaves a gap in the middle: terraced streets, flats and densely-distributed semi-detached homes. These areas are likely not dense enough to warrant central plant district heating rolling out to it. Similarly, these areas often do not have the outdoor space to fit an individual air source (or individual ground source) heat pump:
The catch? This ‘middle’ represents circa 13 million UK households[1], 50% of the total! So what option is there to decarbonise heating in these houses? We believe that, as Element Energy’s modelling shows, networked heat pumps are the cheapest and best way to tackle these homes.
[1] Represents 6.93 million terraced houses and 6.10 million flats/maisonettes. Note this doesn’t include the 6.27 million semi-detached houses. Source: Table CTSOP3.0, Government Official Statistics on stock of properties
Tamsin’s appointment as CEO designate has been confirmed by The Kensa Group Chairman, Lord Taylor, following a rigorous selection process. Tamsin will take her place formally as CEO on the 1st October 2023, with a transition period from the 1st September.
Dr Matthew Trewhella will remain as CEO in the meantime, continuing to focus on delivering the Kensa vision and strategy for energy security and affordability through the mass decarbonisation of heating and cooling with networked heat pumps. He will work closely with Tamsin to ensure a comprehensive handover and a smooth transition. As of Tamsin’s formal take over as CEO, Matt will take up the position of Director of Strategic Business Development prior to his planned departure from the business on the 12th April 2024.
Tamsin is a visionary leader with an excellent track record of building high performing businesses. An Oxford graduate of Engineering Science and Fellow of the Energy Institute, Tamsin will join from her role as Chief Revenue Officer at ENERGYNEST. In this role, Tamsin has developed customer offers to provide green, reliable and affordable industrial heat, specialising in thermal energy storage and power to heat solutions across the UK and EU. Prior to joining ENERGYNEST, Tamsin held senior positions at Northumbrian Water Group, Centrica, and BP.
Tamsin Lishman, CEO designate, says:
I am delighted to be joining Kensa and to be part of a strong, successful and purpose led team. The mass deployment of Kensa’s networked ground source heat pump solutions is the 21st century alternative to gas, enabling the transition from fossil fuels and supporting energy security. Kensa’s offer of affordable, decarbonised heat and cooling to keep our homes and buildings comfortable is an essential part of the energy transition and I’m excited about leading the company in the next stage of growth.
Dr Matt Trewhella, who has been with the Kensa Group since 2013, has today (13th July 2023) announced he will be stepping down from the position of Chief Executive Officer, with a phased transition to the incoming CEO, Tamsin Lishman.
The decision comes after Matt’s considerable years of dedicated service and tremendous contributions to the organisation’s and ground source heat pump technology’s growth and impact, recently affirmed by a £70m investment into the Kensa Group by Octopus Energy and Legal & General Capital.
The Kensa Group consists of three UK-based heat pump specialist businesses: heat pump manufacturer, Kensa Heat Pumps; delivery partner, Kensa Contracting; and networked heat pump asset finance provider, Kensa Utilities.
Through Matt’s tenure, the technology and The Kensa Group have gone from niche to mainstream, with the realisation of networked ground source heat pumps and shared ground arrays becoming a credible alternative to the UK’s sustainable and affordable transition away from gas.
Dr Matthew Trewhella CEO of the Kensa Group comments:
Ground source heating has so much potential and it has been an incredible 10 years at Kensa. We are now completing projects at a scale and with such positive results that the technology is ready for mass deployment at the speed we need. On a personal level, it has been an honour and a privilege to work alongside an incredible group of capable and committed colleagues who have had the vision to join us on our exciting journey. I am taking a long-planned career break and will be avidly following Kensa’s progression over the next few years.
Lord Taylor, Chairman of the Kensa Group, says:
I am delighted to welcome Tamsin to Kensa. Already Kensa has achieved market leading amounts of decarbonisation as the UK’s largest installer of ground source heat pumps, and also made a massive difference to the alleviation of fuel poverty in thousands of homes. Tamsin as our next CEO will lead a fantastic team in ramping up our transformation of UK heating and cooling. I look forward to her leadership and contribution through this next exciting phase of our development which will bring the benefits of what we do to tens of thousands more homes across the country.
As a company working at the heart of the decarbonisation of heating and homes, Kensa is all too aware of the huge challenges in trying to increase heat pump deployment and build a supply chain capable of achieving the government’s targets. At heart, this challenge is a consumer one. It is no small feat to get some 24 million homes to replace their gas boilers with unfamiliar technology, particularly when it often requires major adaptations to their central heating system. However, we have no hope of achieving this mammoth task without a clear, coherent and long-standing policy framework from the government, this has unfortunately been sorely lacking in recent years.
This year’s annual progress report from the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) sets out the heat pump industry’s concerns in black and white.
Whilst steps have been made in the right direction, momentum has been lost and progress is too slow to put us on track to hit 600,000 heat pump installations a year by 2028. Damningly the CCC said its “confidence in the UK meeting its medium-term targets has decreased in the past year”, and that “a key opportunity to raise the overall pace of delivery has been missed.”
The key findings of the report in relation to heat pump installations are as follows:
Richard Warren, Director of Public Affairs at The Kensa Group, shares his thoughts:
Despite the wholly negative conclusions from the CCC’s report regarding progress on heat pumps, the report is to be welcomed in sending a clear message to the government that it is off track and needs to up its game. The report is abundantly clear that the electrification of heat is key to decarbonising buildings, and we have no time to lose in introducing key policies to enable this transition.
Recent studies, such as that published by Element Energy demonstrate the benefits of ground source heat pumps, including lower household bills and energy consumption, reduced strain on the electricity grid, and billions saved in energy infrastructure upgrades and investment.
However, as a British manufacturer committed to supporting the government’s climate targets, developing a domestic supply chain and championing green growth, the policy environment remains extremely challenging for us. If the UK is to experience the full benefits of ground source energy, it is vital the government starts to see this technology as a long-term infrastructure investment – a 21st-century replacement for the gas grid – and develops policy accordingly.
What we need, as the report clearly states, is for the government to shift from ambition to delivery of net zero policies. Kensa will be looking to engage with the appropriate individuals at the CCC to ensure an understanding of the challenges for the ground source heat pump sector and what policies are required to unlock growth.
Enabling Policies Required:
The CCC’s report rightly sets out a number of important recommendations that the government needs to enact to enable rapid electrification of heat. These include:
Further policies for ground source heat:
Kensa and the wider ground source industry warmly welcome all the CCC’s recommendations in this area. However, it is vital to recognise that even this comprehensive report falls short in identifying measures necessary to unlock the full potential of ground source heat pumps, and networked heat pumps in particular. Because networked heat pumps sit somewhere between heat network policy and heat pump policy they are too often forgotten and a major gap in thinking and policy remains.
As Element Energy’s recent Low Carbon Heat Study demonstrated, failing to capitalise on the benefits of networked heat pumps would leave the UK using more energy, paying more for its electricity network, and householders paying more in bills. Two major additional areas of reform are required here:
Important reforms and further funding are required across major schemes like the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, ECO4, Green Heat Network Fund, Green Homes Grant to ensure enough heat pump each year. Critically, to deliver the benefits available from networked heat pumps it is vital that support schemes start to recognise that heat pumps are not one single technology, but two (ASHP and GSHP) with each providing their own benefits and drawbacks.
Support schemes must recognise the long-term benefits GSHP can provide over ASHP (100-year lifetime of infrastructure, greater efficiency, private sector funded networks) and provide bespoke support over the next five years to create the market for GSHP and help us build the UK supply and economies of scale necessary to deliver subsidy free by the end of the decade.
The Energy Bill is starting this approach with plans to establish ‘Heat Network Zones’, but government must go further aiming to ‘heat zone’ the country, working with local authorities to establish the right technologies for the right places.
The 10-minute segment aired on BBC One at 8 pm on the 2nd of July, featuring young people across The Kensa Group and supporting industries that need rapid growth to reach the government’s targets of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028. It explores how the pioneering Heat the Streets project and a new generation of engineers are vital for the UK’s drive for green energy.
Time stamp: 12:35.
The short film, narrated by John Craven, recognises that one of the biggest challenges for the UK going green is getting houses off of gas and onto renewable energy grids to heat our homes, like the Networked Heat Pump model that is demonstrated at Kensa’s Heat the Street project in Stithians.
The episode takes viewers through how ground source heat pumps work and the green jobs needed to roll ground source heat pumps and networked heat pumps out across the country. They chat to Max, a project manager at Kensa about why he got into the renewables industry, as well as drillers Tom and Luke from GroundSearch about the drilling of boreholes for the heat pumps underground infrastructure.
The Kensa Heat Pumps factory is also featured, including a talk-through of the new demo heat pump. Additional team members are interviewed about working in the manufacturing industry and their motivations to be in their roles. It finishes with insights from MD of Kensa Utilities, Wouter Thijssen who shares the central drivers of his career and the need to get more young people into the workforce.
Kensa Utilities, is thrilled to announce that its groundbreaking project, Heat the Streets, has been successful in the category: Green Heat Project of the Year, at the highly esteemed UK Green Business Awards, organised by BusinessGreen. This recognition highlights Kensa Utilities’ commitment to revolutionising the heating industry and its dedication to deployment of sustainable, efficient energy solutions.
Heat the Streets was an ambitious project that aimed to decarbonise residential heating across all housing sectors by deploying Kensa’s highly efficient and renewable ground source heat pump technology connected by an in-road network of boreholes (known as a shared ground loop array). The project has successfully demonstrated the scalability and viability of ground source heat pumps connected to in-road infrastructure as a cost-effective solution for reducing carbon emissions and providing reliable, sustainable heat.
An interview with Jim Sowden, Renewables Manager at Roseland Plumbing & Heat Pumps and Kensa Partner installer.
An interview with Edward Savage, owner of EPS Plumbing & Heating and Kensa Partner installer.
GSHP networks install ambient loops in the street, financed and operated by a third party, with a heat pump in each home connecting to the network. The network absorbs heat from the ground at a near year-round constant of 10°C and delivers it to each home’s heat pump to be raised to the temperature required for heating and hot water. Because of the stable ambient temperature of the ground, GSHPs can achieve efficiencies above 400%, meaning for every kWh of electricity consumed, 4 kWh of heat are supplied to the home. A networked approach to GSHPs means millions of homes, from terraces and tower blocks, can install GSHPs and access the benefits available from them.
Read Executive Summary
The first phase of this study considers the technology from the perspective of the householder, examining the efficiency of ground source and air source technologies and their comparative running and installation costs. Examining the potential benefits of a networked approach to GSHPs, in which the groundwork costs are funded via a long-term network fee instead of upfront capital expenditure, the study finds:
The second phase of the study examines the electricity grid impacts in 2050 of increasing volumes of GSHPs within an assumed total of 23.3 million heat pumps, alongside demand side response and the use of heat batteries in 50% of homes. The study finds:
Leading energy consultant Element Energy, an ERM Group company, has published a ground-breaking study detailing the major benefits available to householders, Britain’s energy system, and our climate objectives, through the deployment of networked ground source heat pumps (GSHP), and heat demand shifting. Networked GSHPs involve the installation of in-street pipework, which absorbs heat at a year-round constant 10°C and delivers it to individual heat pumps in people’s homes.
A networked approach to heat pumps would give millions of homes, from terraced houses to tower blocks, access to the most energy-efficient heating. As this pipework would be owned and operated by a third party, like a 21st century gas grid, the upfront costs of the infrastructure would be removed for individuals. The technology is already heating thousands of homes from Cornwall to Orkney but deploying it at scale could deliver multiple benefits to householders and our energy system.
Element Energy’s Low Carbon Heat Study examines the energy system impacts of increasing the proportion of networked GSHPs, the use of heat batteries and heat demand flexibility in 2050. The study also examines the individual benefits available to households. The key findings include:
The full report can be accessed here or using the following links:
Low Carbon Heat Study: Executive Summary
Low Carbon Heat Study: Phase 1
Low Carbon Heat Study: Phase 2
However, there remain major barriers to the mass roll-out of this technology and the development of a strong UK-based supply chain. At the publication of the report, Kensa, the UK’s primary manufacturer and installer of GSHPs, has highlighted three key policy measures to unlock the potential of ground source heat for Britain:
Sam Foster, Partner at Element Energy, commented:
Achieving widespread rollout of heat pumps in homes up and down the country is key to the UK reaching net zero. This exciting study has generated some fascinating insights into the benefits that greater deployment of ground source heat pumps could provide to the UK’s energy system by mitigating much of the need for costly investments in electricity generation and network upgrades.
We have shown how individual households can benefit from ground source heat pumps and heat flexibility when these are deployed at scale. We’re proud to have led this study, which presents a strong case to re-assess the role that ground source heat pumps can play in the future energy system.
Dr. Matthew Trewhella, CEO of The Kensa Group, commented:
Element Energy’s study demonstrates well the benefits of ground source heat pumps, including lower household bills and energy consumption, reduced strain on the electricity grid, and billions saved in energy infrastructure upgrades and investment. Critically, the study demonstrates that by taking a networked approach and leveraging private-sector finance, it is possible to deliver these benefits without requiring householders to pay more upfront.
However, as a British manufacturer committed to supporting the government’s climate targets and developing a domestic supply chain, the policy environment remains extremely challenging for us. The current one-size-fits-all approach to clean heat will not deliver the optimum mix of technologies. In the same way that different electricity generation technologies, from solar to offshore wind, have been supported by tailored policy, various heating technologies will require their own targeted approach. If the UK is to see the benefits of ground source energy, it is vital the government starts to see this technology as a long-term infrastructure investment – a 21st century replacement for the gas grid – and develops policy accordingly.
Juliet Philips, Senior Policy Adviser at E3G, commented:
Heat pumps are the unsung hero for reducing Britain’s energy use – helping cut bills, reducing our reliance on international fossil fuel markets and tackling the climate crisis. This new report shows that increasing the uptake of ground source heat pumps in the UK could reduce our electricity demand by an amount equivalent to over 2 million homes’ consumption. We hope to see more support from the government to help communities benefit from the opportunities associated with scaling up deployment of this clean tech across the UK.
Ground source heat pumps from Kensa are cutting costs and carbon at a development of 91 high-quality social rent new homes at the City of London Corporation’s York Way Estate in the London Borough of Islington. The environmentally-friendly newbuild scheme is supporting the City Corporation’s Climate Action Strategy.
Kensa Contracting manages projects end to end and Kensa Utilities will fund, own & maintain the shared ground array infrastructure necessary for large-scale ground source systems. This removes the cost and hassle for housebuilders who simply fund the heat pump & internal heating distribution system.
