How do you solve a problem like decarbonisation?
Decarbonisation has been a key challenge for a number of years, no more than in the current climate. With multiple drivers to decarbonisation impacting the heat network industry at the same time, including the rising cost of gas, policy changes and customer aspirations to name a few, ultimately no one knows what the right answer is, which is both scary and exciting as it allows us all to have an impact on the choices made today. Making people commit to a choice on the other hand is a challenge.
No one is questioning the need for decarbonisation, it ties into everything we do and is high up on the agenda of developers, customers and planning teams alike when connecting to a heat network.
The challenge has become apparent: how do you decarbonise an existing heat network?
In years gone by, business cases for heat networks were built on CHPs, anticipated to be a low carbon technology for a number of years, allowing a future low carbon technology to be developed and ‘swapped in’ once the original asset required replacement. However, the speed of grid decarbonisation (which is a good thing!) has meant either a risk of stranded assets that have years of operational life left in them or stunting growth of existing networks as new developments are unable to connect.
The next challenge is which technology is best suited to provide heat to an existing network. When evaluating each technology, the number of considerations becomes apparent, ranging from: is there physically space on the site to install it? Wouldn’t it be cool to put a heat pump there?! To ultimately, what impact will this have on the end customer and cost of heat?
Broadly speaking, at EQUANS we are looking at 3 tiers of decarbonisation in parallel:
System Optimisation – How best to run the current assets in operation more efficiently
Incremental Decarbonisation – Implementing smaller scale technologies to decarbonise the network
Strategic Decarbonisation – Looking at solutions that would enable decarbonisation of the whole network and allow us to supply more net zero heat
By looking at it this way, we aim to kick start projects and enable short term decarbonisation, whilst also looking to firm up solutions for long term decarbonisation.
The tricky aspect comes with continued innovation in the industry (another great thing!) where new solutions are continually being developed. Who is to say that in 3 years’ time hydrogen could be a viable solution or, conversely, no nearer to mainstream use?
Considering each stakeholder involved is also interesting. Whilst everyone is striving for the same objective, the drivers at the forefront of decision making vary. Commercial factors, corporate objectives and ensuring customers’ costs are kept low are all critical drivers. The main driver for current heat network operators is to manage the economic impacts of changing the business case for long term projects as a result of decarbonisation, changing technologies and potentially replacing assets before they reach end of life. Replacing assets early can also ultimately cause more harm as the old and new equipment both have a great amount of embodied carbon. The best solution is to try and manage the decarbonisation transition, allowing assets to run flexibly in line with carbon emissions and within their natural replacement cycle, and bringing in incremental decarbonisation technologies over time to transition the heat to net zero.
In essence, everyone plays a role in achieving decarbonisation and at this current point in time no one can say with 100% confidence what the best solution(s) and roadmap will be on each network. However, for the ones who are committed to net zero, we will need to give it our best effort and start now!
Written by Amy Baker, EQUANS