News
- Published:
- 25 September 2024
Stephen Knight (Heat Trust’s Director) has today travelled to Holyrood to meet Alasdair Allan MSP (Minister for Climate Action), to urge the Scottish government to mirror the existing UK government funding for heat network optimisation and efficiency remediation.
The single biggest cause of consumer detriment on heat networks is poor technical performance. This includes poor efficiency (high heat losses) which results in higher consumer heating costs, and poor reliability which results in frequent unplanned supply outages.
Funding for improving the efficiency of existing heat networks has been available in England and Wales since February 2023, through the UK government's Heat Network Effiency Scheme (HNES). There is no equivalent funding in Scotland, despite significant Scottish government funding for new heat networks.
Heat Trust wrote to the Minister in July 2024 to call for Scottish efficiency funding and today’s meeting follows that letter. Heat Trust’s call for funding has been echoed by Consumer Scotland, the statutory consumer champion in Scotland, which has also written to the Minister.
Stephen Knight said:
“In the absence of technical standards for the design and build of heat networks, too many (both old and very new) suffer from poor design, build, commissioning and operation.
The forthcoming Heat Network Technical Assurance Scheme (HNTAS) due to come in under the future Ofgem authorisation regime should ensure that future heat networks are much more efficient and reliable but there will be very significant investment needed in many existing heat networks to bring them up to standard.
“We have seen several cases of customers on Scottish heat networks telling us they experience high heat costs as a result of poor efficiency and have had to tell them that there is currently no Scottish equivalent funding to HNES in England and Wales.
“The difference between a poorly performing heat network and one that’s efficient can be around £500 a year in heating bills, so with around 50,000 homes in Scotland reliant on heat networks for their heat and hot water, heat network efficiency really matters.”
“Today’s meeting was positive and I hope that, despite a challenging financial climate, the Scottish government will find the modest funding needed to match the support provided in England and Wales.”