SSE – a leading heat network provider in the UK – said the pilot scheme, announced on Monday, should “signal a new era in public support mechanisms for this vital component of the future energy landscape.”
However, SSE’s director of heat, Mike Reynolds added that “more needs to be done in parallel to encourage sustained growth in the sector and bring appropriate quality assurance to customers.”
He said that while good progress has been made in enabling areas with better guidance, such as the introduction of CIBSE design codes and the Heat Trust, “progressive policy intervention should go hand-in-hand” with the funding.
“It is important to ensure that we continue to remove barriers to entry to the market for new suppliers; that we enable competition; that we bring good quality assurance; and, critically, that we address the relatively untouched retrofit market as well as new build,” Reynolds said.
SSE has doubled its heat networks team in the past 12 months to meet demand and anticipated expansion. It currently operates 13 heat networks across the country, including London’s Greenwich Square and Victoria Nova, and will triple the number of customers supplied over the next two years.
It has also recently been selected as the preferred bidder for one of the UK’s largest regeneration projects – Barking Riverside.
The pilot funding scheme will be followed next year by the main scheme with the remaining £281 million from the government’s promised £320 million of promised support.
The investment aims to draw in up to £2 billion of additional capital investment, increasing the number of cost effective, low carbon heat networks being built, while creating the right conditions for a self-sustaining heat network market.
However, concerns have already been raised that the accelerated deployment may exacerbate existing design issues. Others have called for additional criteria to be added to the process to ensure applicants resolve customer issues on existing networks before being granted funding for further developments.