It is possible that all sites can give the end-users – be they residential or commercial – heating and hot water systems that produce the most practical, economic, and technical solution to the vagaries of any site in the UK – on and off-grid. The products and technical abilities are readily available right now.
But progress to this goal needs a bit of help from common sense and a capacity to stop being partisan about either specific products or energy vectors or platforms. There is a need for all products/systems to be designed to work easily and quickly for all those in the supply chain, if we are to achieve net-zero sooner rather than later.
For example, heat pumps, if you listened, watched, and read the BBC content, are the sole answer to net-zero. It would appear that no other product or system exists in the small settlement of North London media types. And, that gas of any kind, no matter how clean, is a demon to be punished.
The truth of the matter is that heat pumps are the right product – but in specific circumstances. Those circumstances also need the site to be accurately evaluated so that the correct size heat pump is deployed. Load demand and seasonal adjustments must be made, and they need to be made realistically based on past data.
The aim must be to both maximise and optimise a whole system, no matter what type of building or property.
Net-zero ambitions can be truly delivered if a measured, pragmatic, and transparent stance is adopted by all the players in the heating and hot water industry, and this can be supported via gathered scientific data applied to finding solutions that allow for least harm and disruption to current standards of living and comfort.
The manufacturing sector of the heating and hot water industry has a responsibility in playing a leading role in the reduction and eventual removal of harmful emissions. For UK decarbonisation targets – despite the current economic and social climates – to be met by fossil fuels is something that must be changed, and transparent assessments of product impact and efficiency should be common currency. To enact the transition to greener energy, there is a pressing need for unity of purpose across multiple industry sectors.
Fact, logic, and reason must be employed to achieve the best outcome for all of us. We need decarbonisation, we need net-zero, and we need it as soon as possible, but in such a way that is pragmatic in terms of catering to the existing populations and markets.
To further encourage decarbonisation the heating industry must look past just simple financial motivation. No one single product alone is presently capable of delivering net-zero, so rather than fracture into competing groups, the heating and hot water sector will benefit from a platform of cross-communication and information sharing that can be relayed to positively assist the UK end-user and customer.
We need to look at this from the consumers’ viewpoint. We need to be putting accurate information in the public arena. At the moment there are a lot of interested bodies and companies showing understandable self-interest in wanting to know they have a future in the marketplace.
In our sector, we have manufacturers of similar or like-for-like products which are looking to what will replace natural gas as the fuel of mass consumption and how that will affect them. We also have the pragmatic logic of trying to find affordable fuels for the mass market. Alternatives on their own are simply not an answer. We also need to look at the range of innovations and developments such as hydrogen and bioLPG that will come on stream.
How would electrification and heat pumps, for example, be attractive in terms of capital, installation and ongoing operational costs and performance? Everything has a role to play and everything non-carbon can have a future. And a collective, equable effort will give us the result we all want, the result we must have, if we are to have a sustained quality of life.
