Walker Morris hosts heat network master class with Nordic Heat

13th July 2018

Key representatives from the heat network market and local authority representatives attended Walker Morris’ offices for the Nordic Heat master class event on heat networks.

The event considered the importance of promoting heat networks in the UK in order to meet the UK’s ambitious targets to increase the market share of heat networks from 2% to 18% by 2050. Heat currently accounts for around a third of the UK’s carbon emissions and heat networks form an important part of the UK’s plan to reduce carbon emissions. Heat networks involve taking heat from a central source and distributing it to a number of buildings using insulated pipes for the use of heating, cooling or hot water.

Speakers at the Nordic Heat event included a number of experienced professionals from the sector covering a range of topics such as the business case for heat networks and consumer and investor perspectives.

Ben Sheppard, Partner in the Energy, Infrastructure and Government Group at Walker Morris commented:

“Heat networks provide a real opportunity for the UK to meet its ambitious carbon targets and can also benefit consumers by providing efficient long-term heating solutions without the need for every household to have its own gas-fired boiler. We see heat networks as having a real potential for growth in the UK so we were very pleased to host this event led by Nordic Heat. Our clients including local authorities, developers, industrial clients, hospitals and universities are becoming increasingly interested in heat networks and are asking for our advice on developing and connecting into heat networks. With £320 million government funding available to the public and private sector, we expect to see more heat network projects being developed in the next few years.”

Chris Garside from Nordic Heat commented that:

“Nordic Heat is very grateful to Walker Morris for hosting our master class event. Leeds is a very natural host city bearing in mind that the City Council sponsored network is currently being delivered by Vital Energy in the east of the city. Our mission at Nordic Heat is to ensure that good practice and knowledge is transferred from those who have done it, such as our Scandinavian colleagues, to those who wish to do it. In this way we can ensure good quality schemes are developed at the right price and to deliver the right outputs.”

Nordic Heat is an independent peer-to-peer training, advisory, resource pooling and business innovation platform aiming to support the development of heat networks.