Insights

Decarbonising non-residential buildings

We live in challenging times where businesses are expected to deal with budgets whilst understanding the rapidly shifting sands of global finances and do all of this with a view to sticking to our decarb targets, despite a seeming ever changing approach to what needs to be done. Bills for hospitals, offices, factories and public buildings are just as high in the residential sector.

It can feel difficult to keep our values and our commitments to reduce our adverse impact on the planet at the front of our minds and yet our organisations, legislation and own inner compasses are all telling us to keep heading in that direction, keep making progress. When it comes to keeping the nation warm at work and in public spaces, the easy stuff is done. The National Grid is decarbonising, building regulations have tightened and new commercial buildings are increasingly all-electric. The hard stuff however is transitioning all existing buildings off gas, within reasonable budgets, without feeling overwhelmed about how to make progress.

But Earth Day gives us the opportunity to acknowledge these challenges and reconnect with simple actions we can take to protect the environment – we’re calling this pragmatic decarbonisation and we to take you on a journey with us to achieve this.

The challenge

Around a third of commercial, industrial and public buildings have a fossil fuelled heating system for producing heating and hot water. There are approximately 1.55 million non-domestic buildings in the UK, and they are responsible for 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions . How do we address this challenge when every penny counts?

Take a practical first step

Replacing an entire gas heating system in a workplace or public building is very costly – switching to an entirely new heat pump system would necessitate replacing all your existing pipe work, your radiators and most of your plant room causing disruption to your workforce or community.

Instead, you can keep all that pipework, those radiators and the gas boiler in the plant room and install a new air source heat pump outside the plant room and new water cylinder inside also connected to the gas boiler. Now you can run the heat pump to meet the base load (the bit where the kettle goes from cold to warm) and the gas to top it up to hot on really cold days.

You can also consider some solar PV and battery storage too. These can ‘add on’ to your existing system too. This would make your heat pump more cost effective and may offset your power costs.

So… same radiators and pipes. Same gas boiler but new heat pump and solar. Bit like keeping the car and changing the engine…

Part of a bigger plan

We often recommend this approach as part of a longer-term decarbonisation plan for NHS trusts and local councils. It spreads out the cost and the disruption of decarbonisation and gives asset managers confidence in and an understanding of the technology.

And the result? You will be able to report that evidenced cost effective progress is being made. You will make reductions in your operational carbon targets. Taking a step in the right direction feels good.