National Trust and Reheat - a decarbonisation success story
Key project achievements
- Reheat has been a significant partner in helping the National Trust achieve its 50% renewable energy target
- Delivered over 2MW of low carbon heat projects on multiple National Trust sites
- Working on historically sensitive properties to deliver biomass heat, heat network efficiency improvements and other renewable energy technologies
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In the last decade, the National Trust has completed more than 130 renewable energy projects across its range of historic properties and facilities, such as mansion houses, cottages and cafes. It forms part of the Trust’s strategy to generate 50% of its energy from renewable sources.
Europe's largest conservation charity can now generate 24 million kilowatt hours of energy each year and has embarked on the decommissioning of oil boilers from its properties, saving 4,000 tonnes of carbon each year.
Reheat has played a significant role in this decarbonisation success story, with a suite of low carbon heat solutions to remove fossil fuels and improve efficiencies across multiple projects for the National Trust in the Midlands and North of England since 2015.
This includes 14 biomass heat projects at a combined capacity of over 2MW – the first of which was a 100kW installation at Nunnington Hall in North Yorkshire. For all biomass system installation projects, Reheat acted as principal designer and contractor. Where there were biomass boilers already installed, Reheat carried out extensive diagnostic and system renewal works to get the systems fully operational where they were otherwise falling short of expectations.
Reheat has also performed heat system optimisation, installed heat distribution controls and has delivered some of the National Trust’s highest performing district heating schemes. Part of this came as Reheat advised the National Trust on the UK Government’s Heat Network Efficiency scheme, delivering heat efficiency projects as a result.
Working around challenging conditions
Responsible forover 500 historic, houses and castles, with millions of members, as well as volunteers and staff, the National Trust has exceptionally challenging properties that are not easily accessible and often need to remain open year-round. This is especially the case when carrying out works that are sensitive to the built heritage.
As a result, Reheat has consistently found solutions to technical problems across the various biomass installation projects. This includes crossing a moat with district heating mains as part of the 440kW pellet boiler installation at Dunham Massey in Cheshire, dealing with the ‘Beast from the East’ while fitting a biomass system to High Peak at Ravenscar (an extremely exposed property overlooking Robin Hood’s Bay), and unexpected challenges such as chasing away peacocks from entering the district heating main trenches at Nunnington Hall every morning when work started!
The very latest biomass project was a 260kW biomass installation at Sizergh Castle, in the Lake District, demonstrating how the National Trust has repeatedly turned to Reheat to support its long-term renewable energy and decarbonisation targets.
