News

SDC on a renewable heat fact finding mission

24 March 2009

The Scottish Government wants renewable heat to make up 11% of our heating by 2020. Finding out how much renewable heat is already in use is crucial to see how far from the target we are. SDC’s new project on renewable heat will provide the essential baseline for measuring progress.

Heat makes up over 50% Scotland’s energy use, and must play a significant role in the efforts to reduce of Scotland’s green house gas emissions. This is the starting point for a new SDC project funded by the Scottish Government.

Renewable Heat Analyst Charlie Blair says: "Electricity and transport fuels are both heavily regulated, and the government has easy access to how much is being produced and used. Heat is less regulated and more difficult to measure – no-one really knows how much renewable heat is used in Scotland each year."

The aim is to put a number on exactly how much renewable heat is currently used in Scotland (estimated at less than 1% of total heat) and what is planned, in Terra Watt hours (TWh). This will feed into the process of data-capture so that there will be better figures to work in the future.

Renewable heat technologies include biomass combustion, which is likely to be the majority, solar thermal, ground air and water source heat pumps, and waste to energy. Renewable heat could displace natural gas, fuel oil, coal, LPG and electricity. It can be applied in large schemes, for example for industry or for community heating, or small scale such as domestic pellet boilers, solar thermal panels or heat pumps.

Charlie Blair says: "We will give Government our figures this summer, and reccomendation how to take this work further"

_{Photo Wagner & Co, Cölbe}  

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