Engineering, design, and advisory practice, Buro Happold, has been awarded a leading place on the National Heat Network Zoning Programme to provide National Zoning Methodology, Commercial, Technical and Project Management Support to the UK Government Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

From 2025 national Heat Network Zoning policy will come into force which will seek to decarbonise heat through zoning and scheme development across England and Wales.

Government expects heat networks and heat pumps to be the preferred means of decarbonising heat from buildings.

Almost 3% of the UK’s heat demand is currently met through heat networks. By 2050, this number is expected to reach 20%.

Under heat network zoning, areas will be identified where heat networks are expected to provide the lowest-cost, low carbon heating. This should also provide developers and investors with more certainty about the number of likely connections to networks to help unlock the billions of pounds of investment needed to build them.

Alasdair Young, Partner and Global Energy Lead said: “We are delighted to be supporting the Department with this important transformation of our energy infrastructure. Place based decarbonisation is key to reducing emissions and improving our energy security. Our energy specialists have been developing city and town-scale networks which capture waste heat recycling it to heat homes, schools, hospitals, and offices. Heat zoning can accelerate the deployment of these networks by de-risking the investment needed. In return the heat network sector needs to offer customers reliable and affordable heat as it becomes a regulated industry.

Heat network zoning will help remove barriers to greener, cheaper heat that currently limit the scale and pace of developing heat networks and encourage investment. At the same time, this should allow for large-scale strategic heat networks to be built across the country.

Under the plans:

• Potential zones are being identified throughout England and Wales using a national methodology.
• Information about the zones will be available via a digital portal.
• The initial ‘batch’ of zones are expected to be under construction by end 2025.

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