Author: Richard Lowes
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Keep immediate heat policy simple, empower, enable and protect.
These are the notes behind my short address at the Policy Connect roundtable on next steps for UK heat policy at 1 Great George Street, London. 22/1/20 5 minutes of heat policy – simplify, empower, enable and protect Beyond simplicity which I won’t define, Empowerment is about engagement, discussion and devolution of power. Enabling is…
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A heat and buildings decarbonisation policy framework for a zero carbon UK
A few months ago, I published a blog on 10 policy steps needed to support the decarbonisation of heat in the UK. Since then, the net-zero law has been adopted and public concern about climate appears to be high on the agenda. In this blog I update the previous steps based on some comments received and…
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Beyond Peak Heat
Around two years ago I released the blog: Is the ‘peak heat’ issue all it’s made out to be? It led to a piece in Utility Week magazine and a response by the Energy Networks Association. My blog discussed the use of the ‘peak heat’ frame by incumbents to imply that gas should be maintained for heating in the UK.…
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Decarbonising heat – 10 policy steps to drive a low carbon heat market
Optimism versus realism As a natural optimist, I seriously hope that much of the UK’s heat decarbonisation problem can be solved by technological and social innovation. I also hope (and expect) that there will be major beneficial spill-over from the major advances made in renewable electricity, storage and transport electrification. However, emissions from heat in…
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‘The best way to decarbonise heat is to convert the gas grid to run on hydrogen’. Against the motion.
Speech for UKERC annual assembly. How have we got to a situation where we are discussing the idea of converting the gas grid to hydrogen? Well quite simply it was realised that decarbonising heat using proven and known technologies would be very hard. No buildings can use fossil oil or gas for heating by 2050…
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Is the ‘peak heat’ issue all it’s made out to be?
If the UK’s Climate Change Act target of an 80% reduction on 1990 emissions levels by 2050 is to be met, it’s generally believed that space and hot water heating need to be fully decarbonised in order to allow room for emissions in other sectors such as aviation and industry (e.g. (DECC, 2013, Committee on…
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Who owns the UK’s energy distribution networks?
When one thinks about the rules and regulations around the UK’s energy networks (which luckily for us at the EPG we often do) we tend to consider price control reviews, governance arrangements and the role of national policies. We don’t often consider the international financial context in which those network companies sit. But perhaps we…
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Reducing gas demand must be central to the UK industrial strategy
The UK’s industrial strategy offers the perfect opportunity to start transforming the UK away from fossil gas. Over the medium term, the climate imperative requires the removal of carbon emissions and ‘unabated’ fossil fuels from the UK energy system (by 2050). However, economic and security issues mean that rapidly accelerating the rate of reduction within…
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80% isn’t enough
Any discussions on heat governance and the future of heating in the UK are welcome, particularly because of the lack of historical focus heat has received. However, this lack of focus means that it is a small network of actors involved in the UK heat policy network and many of the companies or organisations involved…
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