Clean heat neighbourhoods
www.nesta.org.uk/clean-heat-neighbourhoods/
www.nesta.org.uk/clean-heat-neighbourhoods/
The UK's current approach to low-carbon heating relies primarily on individual household decisions, supported by government incentives and regulations. We think that the UK should also implement a more coordinated strategy to create clean heat neighbourhoods, facilitating the transition of multiple households within a specific geographic area - be it a street, neighbourhood, or larger region - to low-carbon heating systems.
Clean heat neighbourhoods is a proposed approach to enabling a coordinated, area-based switch to low-carbon heating schemes. This could look like a local authority-wide collective purchasing scheme for air source heat pumps, a shared ground loop scheme for several roads, or a heat network across part of a city. We think this will involve a few key steps: identifying groups of households where many homes could benefit from a specific approach, developing area-based schemes covering many homes, and then supporting households in that area to join the scheme.
Our previous work mapped the stakeholder groups involved and proposed new organisations at a local and national level that should be created to enable widespread clean heat neighbourhoods. We suggest local heat bodies should sit at a local government level, with a national heat unit providing resources and guidance at a national level.
Our work so far suggests that there may be five key steps to creating clean heat neighbourhoods:
We need to increase the pace of low-carbon heat adoption. A coordinated switch to low-carbon heat would help to expedite rollout alongside offering:
Our work on clean heat neighbourhoods will look to:
Browse our latest content and thinking on coordinated switching
