District Energy Vanguards Network meet to discuss UK Gov Heat Strategy

The UK Government published its Heat Strategy in March 2013. DECC wished to test proposals relating to district heating with the members of the Vanguards Network before publication. To this end the Vanguards met on Friday 15th February 2013, and were kindly hosted by Sheffield City Council at the Sheffield Town Hall.

The Workshop gave network members advance notice of the areas DECC proposes the Heat Strategy will address, and the opportunity to influence the final shape of policies. We reviewed the main proposals to provide feedback to DECC officers in order to inform the final policy. District energy extends across reserved and devolved energy policy matters, and input from both UK and Scottish governments was important in informing our discussions.

Main Topics addressed were:

• The role of a database for high level identification of areas likely to be suitable for district energy
• Provision of an Advisory Service
• Financial support for project development
• Mechanisms for underwriting risk to lower the cost of investment finance
• Technical standards for heat networks
• Model commercial and corporate structures and contracts
• Model customer charter and customer protection standards, including transparency in heat pricing

Attendance was by invitation only: 60 delegates participated, representing 26 local authorities, UK and Scottish governments and agencies, two local authority owned ESCos, six commercial organisations and four academic institutions.

Thank you to our sponsors who supported the event: Carbon Trust, DECC, E.On, Powerpipe and UK Government Research Councils’ (RC-UK) Energy Programme.

The workshop report is below.