Event report: Heat energy – Solutions, Strategies and Storage

EESG Chairperson, Rupert Blackstone, reports on the Heat energy event held in Birmingham on 25 September, with which EESG was closely involved.

This was a follow-up to the recent Institution report, Heat Energy: The Nation’s Forgotten Crisis, for which EESG committee member, Ian Arbon, was the lead author.

The report itself has been very well received and this event itself turned out to be an excellent forum for exploration of some of the key issues that came out of the report.

Although the heat report was wide-ranging, this event focused strongly on district heating.

To a large extent this was due to there currently being a strong market interest in this area in the UK at the moment, and also Government support. We were very fortunate to have not only a presentation by the Principal Engineer Heat Networks Delivery Unit art DECC, Charlotte Large, but also her ongoing attendance and participation through the day.

All too often at such events the government representatives leave straight after delivering their talk and then speakers make recommendations for changes to Government policy that drift into the ether, but at this event there was very constructive engagement with DECC.

At a time when renewable electricity has been the focus of attention on the energy supply side, even though electricity comprises only around a quarter of our total energy consumption, there appeared to be consensus at the event that significant change to policy and national practice was required for the UK to get even close to honouring its European heat energy target by 2020.

While this event was not the highest grossing for the IMechE in revenue terms, in terms of the quality of the content it has been suggested that it ranked very highly and made a valuable contribution to the development of this important area.

The event was chaired jointly by Ian Arbon and Rupert Blackstone.

Find out more about the Energy, Environment and Sustainability Group (EESG).