I can so sympathise on the insulation thing. In decades of occasional visits to the UK (and several years in boarding-school), I think the only decently-insulated building I ever lived or stayed in was a new flat in Canary Wharf, in a building constructed with Hong Kong money, and mostly occupied by Asian finance professionals with standards on this issue.
My heating system is still based around a coal fired back boiler. It works fairly well, but i am aware of the emissions. I've toyed with the idea of switching over to a carbon neutral heating system, probably a hydro pellet stove system, but they're all still kinda pricy, especially when compared to gas boilers (and the house has a mains gas supply out front)
The issue of home heating gets a lot of chat in my family ( comprising as it does former energy economist, a former oil industry senior manager, an offshore renewables engineering consultant and a former building energy consultant.)
It's damn tricky. (Best indicator of fuel poverty in Scotland is not being connected to the gas grid.) The big problem is that burning gas inside your home has something like a 80% efficiency rate whereas burning gas to make electricity to heat your home has something like a 20% efficiency rate. So, whilst gas is the dominant price driver of electricity prices electric heating will cost 3-4 times as much as gas central heating/
In terms of the technical possibilities one could run an insulated pipe from Hunterston to Torness through the Central Belt and get usable heat all along the way. So a massive network district heating schemes trading generated or waste heat is possible.
(Or similar lengths of pipe from locations with waste heat.)
But the digging the pipe is expensive. Not so much the big mains heating pipe but the thousands of miles of off-taking pipe that go along streets and in to houses.
Then there is a co-ordination problem. It would be desirable if everyone in a suburb could change to district heating at the same time.
I did some work on this when I was a policy wonk. There doesn't seem to be an elegant solution. What will help are
1) Better building standards for new builds - all new builds should have district heating and should be built to the highest standards of energy efficiency
2) Better insulation standards for rental homes (holiday lets, and rented homes) to be phased in. I'd make HMO licences dependent on meeting better standards.
3) Better standards on insulation whenever a privately owned home has a major refurbishment (building warrants dependent on meeting better standards.)
4) Policy support for all of the alternatives to gas or traditional central heating, for example subsidies for ground or air heat pumps and prioritisation for any planning permission and consents
At some point electricity from solar PV is probably going to be as cheap as burning gas in your own home, perhaps cheaper, even in Scotland, which might help.
But it's a problem for places like Scotland.
(In a way that cooling with solar PV in places like Australia is not as peak generation for solar PV matches reasonably closely with peak demand.)
How about those big masonry stove things that burn wood? Much used in northern Europe, apparently. Those are supposed to be very efficient, and handy for people in remote rural areas.
Nuclear power, of course is the ultimate non-carbon generating power source...
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https://www.enwave.com/case-studies/enwave-and-toronto-water-tap-into-innovative-energy-source/
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It's damn tricky. (Best indicator of fuel poverty in Scotland is not being connected to the gas grid.) The big problem is that burning gas inside your home has something like a 80% efficiency rate whereas burning gas to make electricity to heat your home has something like a 20% efficiency rate. So, whilst gas is the dominant price driver of electricity prices electric heating will cost 3-4 times as much as gas central heating/
In terms of the technical possibilities one could run an insulated pipe from Hunterston to Torness through the Central Belt and get usable heat all along the way. So a massive network district heating schemes trading generated or waste heat is possible.
(Or similar lengths of pipe from locations with waste heat.)
But the digging the pipe is expensive. Not so much the big mains heating pipe but the thousands of miles of off-taking pipe that go along streets and in to houses.
Then there is a co-ordination problem. It would be desirable if everyone in a suburb could change to district heating at the same time.
I did some work on this when I was a policy wonk. There doesn't seem to be an elegant solution. What will help are
1) Better building standards for new builds - all new builds should have district heating and should be built to the highest standards of energy efficiency
2) Better insulation standards for rental homes (holiday lets, and rented homes) to be phased in. I'd make HMO licences dependent on meeting better standards.
3) Better standards on insulation whenever a privately owned home has a major refurbishment (building warrants dependent on meeting better standards.)
4) Policy support for all of the alternatives to gas or traditional central heating, for example subsidies for ground or air heat pumps and prioritisation for any planning permission and consents
At some point electricity from solar PV is probably going to be as cheap as burning gas in your own home, perhaps cheaper, even in Scotland, which might help.
But it's a problem for places like Scotland.
(In a way that cooling with solar PV in places like Australia is not as peak generation for solar PV matches reasonably closely with peak demand.)
No easy ways forward.
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Nuclear power, of course is the ultimate non-carbon generating power source...
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