Working with communities across Scotland to locally generate and decarbonise heat in homes and buildings
Reheat is delivering the Community Heat Development Programme (CHDP) on behalf of Local Energy Scotland and the Scottish Government, to support communities across Scotland to develop local, low and zero carbon heat project ideas by working with eligible community organisations and groups of householders.
The programme is part of the Scottish Government's Heat in Building Strategy and sits under the wider Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES). CARES supports communities across Scotland to engage with, participate in and benefit from the energy transition to net zero. Currently, the country has 170,000 off-gas homes reliant on fossil fuels, as well as at least 1 million homes currently using mains gas. By 2030, these buildings and homes must be zero emissions, which is why communities are being placed at the heart of such an ambitious transition.
Delivering the Community Heat Development Programme
Reheat's role in the CHDP is for our consultancy team to deliver advice to community groups to assess whether their ideas forcommunity heat are viable, and provide a detailed feasibility study looking atall aspects of the project. This includes expert advice on the most appropriate technologies, as well as ownership models and potential funding opportunities.
To date, we have delivered 21 projects, including 11 feasibility studies, and assessed a wide range of renewable heat technology options. This includes biomass heat networks, ground source ambient loops, ground source with solar thermal, recovered heat from local industry, water source heat pumps and individual air source heat pumps.
The scale of the projects and location range from six neighbours in rural Scotland to entire settlements on the banks of Loch Leven. We are also delivering projects in Edinburgh and Glasgow city centre all the way to Thurso in the Scottish Highlands. A range of industries and non-domestic buildings have been included as part of the project, such as distilleries, hospitals, schools, community buildings and hotels.
With the approach focused on community engagement and establishing a detailed understanding of community needs to ensure that we provide accurate advice appropriate to each unique situation. Our support includes community energy surveys and analysis of heat demand, drawing on Reheat’s substantial experience of low carbon heat technologies and heat networks to identify the most appropriate technical solution that also fits with the communities' aspirations, capacity and appetite to deliver.
While community owned wind and solar are fairly common, community heat is still a very new concept and there are few examples in the UK successfully up and running. A key objective of the Community Heat Development Programme is to learn about community heat and to test new approaches. As part of this learning approach, Reheat is also contracted to research and prepare a range of papers on various aspects of community heat, from ownership models, existing community heat projects and opportunities for novel financing arrangements and how to tackle issues around mutualising risk.
The programme is a forward-thinking example of how to tackle the major issue of heat in homes, and the Reheat team is delighted to be at the heart of driving forward community heat for Scotland.
