Heat in buildings strategy - achieving net zero emissions: consultation

Footnotes

1 A household is defined as being in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime, total fuel costs necessary for the home are more than 10% of the household’s adjusted net income (i.e. after housing costs), and if after deducting those fuel costs, benefits received for a care need or disability and childcare costs, the household’s remaining adjusted net income is insufficient to maintain an acceptable standard of living. The remaining adjusted net income must be at least 90% of the UK Minimum Income Standard to be considered an acceptable standard of living with an additional amount added for households in remote rural, remote small town and island areas. If more than 20% of net income is needed, the household is defined as being in extreme fuel poverty.

2 In practice, this number will depend on the sequencing of non-domestic conversion due to the significant variation in size and energy consumption of our non-domestic buildings.

3 Pending further evidence on combustion of hydrogen for heat, we assume there may be very low levels of greenhouse gases emitted at point of use.

4 The fuel poverty rate is 24.6% (613,000 households), while the extreme fuel poverty rate is 12.4% (311,000 households). Scottish Government, Scottish House Condition Survey, 2019, Table 30, URL: https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-house-condition-survey/ (last accessed: 20/01/2021).

5 The annual amount that would be required to move the household out of fuel poverty, adjusted to 2015 prices.

6 A typical modern condensing gas boiler has an efficiency of 0.9, compared to 2.4 for an air source heat pump and 3.4 for a ground source heat pump.

7 green and blue infrastructure is to be understood as all natural and semi-natural landscape elements such as parks, rivers., gardens, streams and sustainable urban drainage ponds (SUDS).

8 Based on provisional modelling of the non-domestic building stock.

9 UK Government, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Hy4Heat, 2018, URL: https://www.hy4heat.info/ (last accessed: 20/01/2021).

10 Unpublished statistics from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) heat metering and billing collection.

11 A building can be described as an “anchor load” if its heating need is both substantial and steady to ensure basic heat demand which, in turn, will stabilise the heat network and provide stable income stream for the business.

12 Cost expressed in real terms (today’s prices). Note that it is possible that as technology develops and the market scales up, real costs could fall over time. By way of comparison, there have already been very significant falls in the costs of renewable electricity generation.

13 Public private partnerships (PPPs) are arrangements typified by joint working between the public and private sector. PPPs can take a variety of forms but the basic concept uses private sector finance and expertise to provide services or infrastructure. They can take the form of a contract with the public sector with a unitary payment made for the services or infrastructure paid by the public sector; a free-standing project with services or infrastructure paid for those who benefit, or a joint venture where some public investment is needed to enable the project to go ahead.

14 A Regulated Asset Based (RAB) model is a type of economic regulation typically used in the UK for monopoly infrastructure assets such as water, gas and electricity networks. The company receives a licence from an economic regulator, which grants it the right to charge a regulated price to users in exchange for provision of the infrastructure in question. The regulated return helps secure private finance.

15 In 2019 the Scottish Government ran a call for evidence on the future of low carbon heat for off gas buildings. Respondents saw policy and regulation as having a key role in supporting deployment of low carbon heat in off-gas buildings, particularly to provide stability and certainty to the market. Scottish Government, The future of low carbon heat for off gas buildings: a call for evidence, 2019, URL: https://consult.gov.scot/better-homes-division/the-future-of-low-carbon-heat/ (last accessed: 20/01/2021).

16 As set out in our Scoping Consultation on the 2024 New Build Heat Standard, ‘Zero direct emissions from heating and cooling’ will ensure that no greenhouse gas emissions are produced from the heating or cooling system contained within a building at the point of use. In contrast, the concept of net zero greenhouse gas emissions allows for additional measures to be used to ‘offset’ any greenhouse gas emissions produced, or otherwise associated with energy use at the building. This Standard will not allow for offsetting.

17 Multi-tenure or mixed-use buildings under certain circumstances may be given until 2040-45 to improve both their energy efficiency and install a zero emissions heat supply, depending on the complexity involved in coordinating works and recovering costs between multiple owners, which may necessitate a ‘whole building intervention’ simultaneously covering energy efficiency and heat supply improvements.

18 Multi-tenure or mixed-use buildings under certain circumstances may be given until 2040-45 to improve both their energy efficiency and install a zero emissions heat supply, depending on the complexity involved in coordinating works and recovering costs between multiple owners, which may necessitate a ‘whole building intervention’ simultaneously covering energy efficiency and heat supply improvements.

19 The term mixed use here refers to more than one use in the same building such as domestic and any non-domestic use or retail and office use in the same building.

20 Multi-tenure or mixed-use buildings under certain circumstances may be given until 2040-45 to improve both their energy efficiency and install a zero emissions heat supply depending on the complexity involved in coordinating works and recovering costs between multiple owners, which may necessitate a ‘whole building intervention’, simultaneously covering energy efficiency and heat supply improvements.

21 This could include for example heat network zones as set out in the Heat Networks Bill.

22 Of these, zero emissions heating manufacturing alone is estimated to employ around 2,000 and 8,200 people are estimated to work in the design, manufacture and installation of energy efficient products such as wall insulation and energy efficient doors and windows.