£32.8m funding for heat pump projects

UK: Four heat pump projects are to receive £32.8m from the UK government’s Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF). 

Three projects in London will receive £20.2m to connect 8,500 new homes and businesses to low carbon heat networks powered by air- and ground-source heat pumps, while Barnsley will receive £12.6m of funding for a multi-source heat pump network for a range of existing businesses and public sector buildings. 

The London projects encompass the Clapham Park and Brent Cross town developments and, in Hammersmith and Fulham, the West King Street project to decarbonise the grade-II listed town hall alongside new homes.

Brent Cross

GHNF is awarding £14m of construction and commercialisation funding for Brent Cross Town’s heat network, supporting a project to become net zero carbon by 2030. 

Low carbon heat will be generated through a fully electric energy centre and supplied to 6,700 new residential properties, and commercial and leisure buildings.

The network will meet the town’s demand of 30MW of heat and 20MW of cooling peak capacities. 

André Gibbs, executive director at Related Argent, the joint developer with Barnet Council said: “When complete, Brent Cross Town will have one of the largest fully electric energy centres in Europe, developed in partnership with Vattenfall.”

Clapham Park  

The Clapham Park regeneration project in South London is receiving £3.7m of construction funding to decarbonise the existing Clapham Park District Heating Network, currently serving 569 homes, with plans to extend to connect 3,347 homes to low carbon heat as well as 16 commercial customers. 

The heat network will be decarbonised with 3MW of high efficiency air-source heat pumps, alongside thermal storage and resilience capacity. These technologies will be stored in a new energy centre, with decarbonisation works set to be complete by the beginning of 2025.

West King Street 

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has been awarded £2.5m of construction funding for the West King Street project to decarbonise both the grade II-listed town hall, alongside 204 new homes, 50% of which are affordable.

Heating and cooling will be provided to all buildings via a ground-source heat pump. Other buildings in the development are set to receive low carbon heating and cooling include event spaces, offices, public spaces, a cinema and restaurant. The project is being delivered by West King Street Renewal LLP, a joint venture between the Council and A2Dominion Developments Limited.

Barnsley 

District and communal heat company Hemiko is being awarded £12.6m of funding to develop the Barnsley Heat Network. Hemiko will invest £32.3m alongside this funding, to develop an initial network which will connect around 20 buildings in the town centre. They will deploy further investment to expand the network and offer low carbon heat to all homes and businesses in Barnsley town by 2050.

The GHNF will support the commercialisation and construction of a 2.3MW mine-water plant and 6MW of air-source heat pump capacity, with plans to explore taking heat from nearby industrial manufacturing plant as the network expands.  

The scheme will provide a total of 38GWh of heat per year to a mixture of public and private-sector connections, including council buildings, in the first two phases of the project. Construction is due to start in early 2025