Heat decarbonisation is key to achieving Net Zero, and innovators have a vital role to play. Here is Energy Systems Catapult’s overview of the decarbonisation challenge and how we can tackle it through low-carbon home-heating innovation.
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Heat decarbonisation is key to achieving Net Zero, and innovators have a vital role to play. Here is Energy Systems Catapult’s overview of the decarbonisation challenge and how we can tackle it through low-carbon home-heating innovation, providing insights and solutions to the challenge along the way.
We need to decarbonise heating as it is the United Kingdom’s biggest source of carbon emissions, which are the fossil fuel gases that contribute to climate change. Heating accounts for about 37% of total UK carbon emissions, making it an important factor towards contributing to the UK Government’s commitment to a Net Zero carbon emissions target across the economy by 2050.
What do Net Zero targets mean for heating?
Under the UK’s new 2050 Net Zero carbon emission targets, the Climate Change Committee expects that certain parts of the economy – such as air travel, agriculture and cement-making – will continue to emit some carbon. These emissions will need to be captured using carbon capture and storage technology or be offset through measures such as carbon sequestration by planting trees.
But for heating, the overwhelming majority of buildings and homes in the UK will need low-carbon solutions that enable them to reach near-zero carbon by 2050.
What is the size of the decarbonisation challenge?
Currently, heating in the UK is dominated by fossil fuels, with 85% or about 24.5 million homes (and over two million businesses) supplied directly by the mains gas grid. Converting them to low-carbon heating over the next 30 years to 2050 is a similar-sized task as the switch to central heating – which took 35 years to increase from 30% to 95% of homes from the 1970s.
This guide explains some of the low-carbon options available for heating (e.g., heat pumps), methods for improving buildings’ heating efficiency, and what Energy System’s Catapult is doing to help others reach their Net Zero goals when it comes to heating.
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