Easy wins in decarbonising Britain
Russell Dean, Deputy Divisional Manager (Living Environment Systems)
| Mitsubishi Electric
While the government focuses on heat pumps for homes, commercial buildings offer easy wins to help get the UK to net-zero.
The UK’s 7th Carbon Budget proposal demonstrates that buildings have an increasing role in achieving decarbonisation targets, with a tripling of efforts in the next three carbon budgets.
While homes are a vital part of the journey to net-zero and replacing gas as the dominant form of heating is key, there are big challenges in finding ways to stimulate and grow the domestic market at the needed pace.
Commercially, though, significant savings in carbon emissions can be achieved if we focus on how we heat non-domestic buildings, instead of only talking about decarbonising homes. The opportunities are much more readily achievable and offer quick wins in terms of carbon reduction, both for businesses and the nation.
The commercial sector's gas consumption in England and Wales has remained fairly flat, with an approximate 2.5 per cent reduction in gas consumption since 2012 (Non-Domestic National Energy Efficiency Data Framework 2022). This shows commercial gas consumption as 156 TWh a year.
According to Ofgem, the average British household consumes 11,500 kWh of gas each year, and using data from the Efficiency Data Framework, we can calculate that the commercial sector in England and Wales consumes the equivalent amount of gas as 13.5m homes.
That’s each year, which is a lot of gas!
Public sector decarbonisation
The public sector has already seen a quiet evolution taking place, in our schools, town halls, libraries and leisure centres as they adopt cleaner heating and cut their emissions.
This transition has been part of wider energy efficiency upgrades or planned refurbishments, with the uptake demonstrating the desire for the decarbonisation of non-domestic buildings.
This has been supported by public sector initiatives like the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, and confirmation of its continuation with Phase 4 is to be welcomed. Its success should be replicated through other schemes which target commercial, non-domestic buildings.
Across both the public and private sectors, around 35,000 heat-generating products are sold annually, offering significant carbon reduction opportunities – and lots of ‘green jobs’ for the renewable installation companies involved.
One barrier hindering the adoption of heat pumps by private companies, though, is uncertainty about issues such as energy efficiency standards for commercial buildings, as this makes planning hard for businesses, who fear changing requirements limiting their commitment to investing in cleaner technologies.
With this in mind, the government should review the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard and adopt best practice to provide a clear and consistent approach to defining net-zero carbon-aligned buildings and address market demand for a unified approach.
Government should also follow through with the proposal to raise the minimum EPC requirement to let a building from the current EPC of E to an EPC of B by 2030 (with a possible interim step of C by 2027).
This would require landlords to upgrade their buildings to meet stricter energy efficiency standards.
Finally, both commercial and residential bill payers need a rebalancing of gas versus electricity pricing through policy levy reform. This should include redistributing these levies, either shifting some from electricity to gas or funding them through taxation, making electricity more affordable and encouraging more decarbonisation of heating.
We welcome the government’s upcoming consultation on this important issue.
Time for action
While the nation has made progress in adopting low-carbon technologies in the public sector, this has not been reflected in the non-domestic sector, which should be supported by the government with clear standards and guidance, if the UK is to decarbonise buildings at the same pace.
Heat pumps are pivotal in the drive to decarbonisation, and we estimate that an ‘average’ commercial heat pump installation equates to at least eight residential ones, so it is time for additional attention on the decarbonisation potential of commercial heat pumps.
