Charles Robson
Director, Burges Salmon
Ros Harris
Partner, Burges Salmon
Heat networks are an important part of the UK’s low-carbon future. Their benefits include energy efficiency and resilience, and for the built environment, better placemaking.
If the UK is to meet its ambitious 2050 net zero targets, it needs to decarbonise space heating, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s easier said than done because more than 70% UK homes and businesses rely on gas heating.1
Heat networks can make a big difference. It takes heat from multiple energy sources — which can be surplus heat like wastewater plants, factories and data centres — and delivers via a shared infrastructure of insulated pipes to buildings across a neighbourhood.
“It makes sense to use heat we’re already producing to heat homes and businesses,” notes Charles Robson, who leads the Clean Heat team at Burges Salmon, a legal advisor for the Government’s Heat Network Transformation Programme. “It’s heat that would otherwise be wasted.”
Multiple sources also make the system resilient. Plus, because these networks can store excess electricity as heat, they can help balance supply and demand on an overloaded electricity grid and alleviate capacity demands on local electricity grids.
Heat network zoning offers a great opportunity for collaboration and integrated thinking between planners, developers, local authorities and other stakeholders
What heat network zoning means for developers
Heat networks aren’t a new idea: Nordic countries have been using them for decades. Yet they currently supply just 3% of UK heat.2 So why are we behind?
“It’s demand risk,” says Robson. “Understandably, private investors want to know that enough people will take heat from the network to justify the capital investment. But there’s been good progress in building district heat networks in recent years, and now the Heat Network Transformation Programme is intended to move the dial.”
Zoning involves the Government identifying zones where heat networks provide the lowest-cost, low-carbon heating options; then introducing regulations that require certain building categories to connect to heat networks.
Heat network infrastructure should be factored in at the masterplanning stage, alongside other utilities such as power, water and data connections.
“Heat strategy and networks will form a major part of masterplanning for new developments — especially when you take into account zoning,” says Ros Harris, Partner in the Burges Salmon real estate team. “It involves thinking about heat on a neighbourhood, estate or wider basis, rather than an individual building approach, and should be an early-stage consideration. Heat network zoning offers a great opportunity for collaboration and integrated thinking between planners, developers, local authorities and other stakeholders.”
[1] Department for Energy Security & Net Zero & Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. (2021). Heat and building strategy (accessible webpage). https://tinyurl.com/4j9r6duf.
[2] Department for Energy Security & Net Zero. (2024). Heat network zoning: overview. https://tinyurl.com/2ra9mmz4.
