Modern Building Services

FEATURE NET ZERO MODERN BUILDING SERVICES DECEMBER 2022/JANUARY 2023 25 The UK is behind some of its neighbours in the adoption of these more efficient heating and cooling technologies. On the residential side, the government started to address this deficit a year ago with the incentive program to provide up to £5,000 per household in relief for moving to heat pumps away from gas boilers. Some organisations have made the transition from fossil gas boilers even without a similar incentive. Broomfield College in Derby is one good example. The project replaced the college’s existing fossil fuel boilers with a Thermal System combining both Air and Water Sourced Heat pumps, reducing energy consumption by 790,000 kWh and 160 tons of CO 2 emissions, annually. The project earned a People’s Choice Award from the European Heat Pump Association earlier this year. Broomfield College is just one of many organisations, public and private, that is making the transition, even in the absence of an incentive scheme similar to the one government offers to residential property owners. But extending the scheme to non-residential buildings is something government should consider as part of how it considers themeans to achieving Net Zero targets across the built environment. Government target Some aggressive targets have been set. By 2037, for example, the Government has set the target of reducing emissions from public buildings by 75%. Before the Prime Minister left for Egypt, media reports revealed an estimate of up to £30 billion to decarbonise public buildings would be required between now and 2037 to meet those targets. Government spokespeople pointed out in response that those estimates were based on undiscounted pricing, and that the topline figure does not consider the amount that will need to be spent in the next 15 years to replace aging systems. But there can be no doubt that the investment required is substantial. Some have looked at the scale of change required and found it daunting. But we have made changes at a similar scale before. After the discovery of North Sea gas in 1965, the government undertook a wholesale transition to new energy technologies that could take advantage of this new supply, moving away from the “town gas” derived from oil and coal. More than 13 million buildings across the UK were retrofitted to install gas boilers. At the time, there were objections to the scale of the change. But by 1977, the chairman of British Gas hailed the completion of the project as one of the greatest feats of infrastructure ever accomplished in peacetime. The scale of the transition away from burning fossil fuel to heat buildings to more efficient technologies is even greater. However, other solutions exist to finance that move. Heat as a Service (HaaS) So-called “heat-as-a-service” (HaaS) is a novel method of reducing the up-front investment required from the customer to install an entirely new heating and cooling system and smooths out the cost over time. It works in much the same way as leasing, rather than buying, a car. Using HaaS, an organisation agrees to a long-term contract with an energy services company to install and maintain low-carbon heating and cooling systems. Rather than having to absorb the capital cost of the equipment, the costs to the customer are classed as operating expenditure over the lifetime of the equipment. Like the differences between buying and leasing a vehicle, HaaS comes with other benefits. For one, innovations in low-carbon heating and cooling systems continue to ramp up. Organisations for which energy, heating and cooling are not their core competency will find it less efficient to see how that technology landscape is evolving to leverage and deploy better solutions. There is also the issue of economies of scale. Getting the benefits of those innovations, and the lower energy costs that come with them, is easier for organisations that have the market clout and market expertise to integrate them into heating and cooling solutions. Not to be ignored are the reputational benefits for the organisation using HaaS tomove quicker to low-carbon solutions for heating and cooling. Much like the reputational benefit of moving vehicle fleets from combustion engine vehicles to EVs, being able to point to this significant milestone in decarbonising buildings is a signal to the public and other stakeholders of the seriousness of organisations in helping the countrymove towards achieving its Net Zero goals. Using HaaS to achieve it potentially also makes the investment easier to justify to stakeholders. Earlier this year, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development published 1 an extensive guide aimed at facility owners and finance departments to explain the approach in more detail and its benefits for energy efficiency, long-term cost savings, and as an accelerator for national Net Zero targets. At a time when public and private balance sheets are under pressure, HaaS represents a way to leverage financial solutions that enable us to maintain momentum toward Net Zero while also freeing up needed capital for other priorities. Public sector organisations have an opportunity to lead the way. HaaS is a relatively new concept and its uptake has significant room for growth. Greater adoption will enable us to continue making progress toward Net Zero by decarbonising our buildings in the same way we have made strides in decarbonising transport. HaaS offers the added benefit of doing it in a way that eases some of the financial concerns that some observers might see as a reason to delay the changes we all know are urgently required. Source 1. https://tinyurl.com/yfw9545u More information can be found at www.tranetechnologies.com “So-called (HaaS) is a novel method of reducing the up-front investment required from the customer to install an entirely new heating and cooling systemand smooths out the cost over time.”