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CNZ x Advanced Infrastructure

Demonstrating the real world impact of electrifying heating over the next decade

Intro

We’re not talking enough about heating and its impact on the environment. In a survey commissioned by National Grid in 2020, just 5% of respondents thought that heating their homes was a major contributor to climate change. That’s in sharp contrast to the 89% of those surveyed who cited transport as a key area of environmental concern.

It’s insights like these that encouraged us to partner with Advanced Infrastructure during London Climate Action Week last year and take a data-driven look at how the capital can wean itself off fossil fuels through an increased adoption of heat pumps.

Context

Unfortunately, we’re only at the starting gates: London currently has the lowest take up of heat pumps, with less than 500 installations across the capital. Clearly, changing the way we heat nearly four million households is not a small undertaking and the scale of the challenge shouldn’t be underestimated. Yet we have to act now if we’re to hit net zero by 2050. Rather than gazing into the distant future, we wanted to explore the opportunities — and potential challenges — that low carbon technologies offer in the next 10 years.

Our research team decided to investigate four areas: how London heats its homes today, how the need for heating varies across London, the difference that heat pumps could make and what needs to happen to accommodate that change.

Methodology

At the heart of our approach to research at Centre for Net Zero is a belief in the importance of bringing real-world data to bear in energy modelling. We took anonymised gas smart meter data from across London and looked at how readings varied as a result of home type (e.g. houses and flats) and EPC ratings. We scaled up our analysis from those 1,200 households according to the housing stock in each MSOA (Middle Level Super Output Area, a subdivision of local authorities), arriving at a gas demand for the 3.8 million homes in London. We then considered what might happen in the future and inferred a heat pump profile for a cold week in February 2021. Those were drawn from a few hundred Octopus Agile users: customers on a dynamic time-of-use tariff. We excluded households with EV chargers.

We then assumed that heat pump adoption will increase in London over the next decade in accordance with the most bullish National Grid and UKPN estimates, taking installations from 500 today to 500,000 in 2031. We also included projected household growth and looked at the level of growth in peak electrical demand.

We focused our analysis on the coldest day of the year to date: 13th February 2021. On this one day of gas consumption, Londoners generated more than 74,000 tonnes of CO2. To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to two million diesel cars driving the whole way round the M25.

To showcase how gas consumption varies across the city, we presented data on household consumption by borough on that day. Tower Hamlets indexed lowest, with residents consuming 60% less gas than those at the highest end of the spectrum in Bexley. Why might this be? We know that EPC ratings and housing type vary significantly across boroughs, with differences in energy efficiency and home insulation driving this divergence.

Results

Advanced Infrastructure created eye-catching visualisations of London energy usage. They created an animation (Figure 1) that depicted the coldest day in 2021 in terms of gas demand and then contrasted this with an animation (Figure 2) showing what electricity demand would look like in the same conditions in 2031 (assuming heat pump adoption meets predicted rates).

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

The result was a clear surge in electricity demand, with particular spikes in parts of London where heat pump uptake is likely to be high. These areas, highlighted in red in Figure 3, are expected to contain lots of new build properties installed with heat pumps. Using a crude rule of thumb, if peak electricity demand exceeds 20% of 2021 levels in these areas, we will need to find ways to manage that increase — by reducing it, being smarter about when we use energy or reinforcing the network.

Figure 3

Analysis

What tools do we have to accommodate this predicted growth in electricity demand? We know that we can manage these challenges if we focus efforts on improving energy efficiency, smartness, flexibility and infrastructure. But there’s an onus on all actors in this space, including government, network companies, researchers and the general public, to work together and make the right calls for each local area and move us towards a greener future for heating.

Having shared this piece of research with London Climate Action Week’s audience, we brought together an expert panel to debate its findings. Madeleine Greenhalgh, Policy Lead at Regen, and Alastair Buckley, Academic Director at Sheffield Solar, joined representatives from Advanced Infrastructure and Centre for Net Zero to discuss some of the potential implications of this research. 

We know we need to look at a plethora of solutions, including improvements in energy efficiency to the adoption of smart technologies, but how can we avoid taking a siloed approach? Madeleine stressed the importance of joined-up thinking and called for a team or organisation to look at the challenge in its totality, from a systems architect to an ‘Office for Net Zero’ to bring different government actors together.

We then discussed the importance of data accuracy when modelling future energy scenarios. Alistair highlighted how access to real data from people’s homes is key to being able to accurately measure what’s happening today and to use that to project the future. In this case, using recent data from homes that already have heat pumps in place is a significant step forward, as typical profiles date quickly and fail to reflect variation from home to home.

Inertia to change was a concern that was voiced repeatedly: how do we catalyse progress and stop the damage that installing gas boilers today is doing to our net zero goal? The average lifespan of a gas boiler is between 10 and 25 years – so we need to confront today’s legacy behaviours. We know that intervention at the right time, from home renovations to gas boiler breakdowns, is a central part of the solution: how can we find ways to install heat pumps at times that are convenient for people?

The final part of the discussion centred on what the panellists were hoping to see from BEIS and its ‘Heat and Buildings strategy’. Madeleine pointed to the funding model for the decarbonisation of homes, demanding clarity on how we make the transition financially viable for those who don’t have the necessary capital. Those on low incomes will hopefully be supported by grants and social housing schemes, but what about the middle-bracket who can’t justify the necessary financial outlay? Alastair called for an end to siloed thinking and highlighted the overlap between our electricity and buildings strategies. More joined-up thinking is required as we consider the impact of one on the other. Final remarks centred on the desire for the publishing of the strategy to prompt a wider public discourse around the decarbonisation of heating and build support that’s needed for requisite changes.

This piece of research demonstrates a significant opportunity for London to showcase leadership in this area and drive the adoption of heat pumps forward, providing important lessons and insights that can be adopted and adapted by other cities around the world as we all drive towards the decarbonisation of heating.

Want to watch the discussion in full? Head to our YouTube channel