Talk title: Summary of the Workshops
Speaker: Workshop Facilitators, Grundfos UK, Vattenfall, SAV Systems and Sweco Netherlands
Event: CIBSE Scotland Conference 2026: Heating the Future, 27 May 2026
Video: MISSING

[00:00] Okay, so first of all, thank you very much to everybody that came along to the technical workshop. The audience was very engaged and lots of questions getting asked, which was fantastic to see. So the main key points, I guess, that we got to talk about and from the questions would be to just think about, from a pumping perspective, how we think about controlling those main pumps.

[00:25] So if you look at the CIBSE guide for heat networks, it tells you that constant pressure control is not the best control method for heat networks. So you really want to be thinking about proportional control and that will give you the better pump energy savings. And they can be quite significant, as we saw with the examples.

[00:52] Also, don't just think about the peak demand. So when we're obviously sizing pumps on peak demand, you guys are looking at everything running at the same time for the coldest day of the year. But we also have to think about the peak demand. So when we're obviously sizing pumps on peak demand, you guys are looking at everything running at the same time for the coldest day of the year. But we also have to think about how that load is going to vary and the full pump capacity is hardly ever going to get used. So we want to be thinking about that minimum load and then that will help us determine how we want to perhaps split that load of pumps.

[01:21] And it might be that we look at a number of pumps rather than two big pumps duty standby. And when we look at splitting up those number of pumps, we then want to think about how we control that cascade. So we want to be looking at things. So we want to be looking at things like controlling the pumps from an energy efficiency point of view rather than wait until one pump's overloaded, consuming too much energy and bringing on pump number two. We want to be looking at bringing two pumps on at the same time and equalizing out that efficiency.

[01:51] And I guess that was pretty much it from our side of things. So thank you once again. Thank you, John. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

[02:02] Is it the double act next or is it Carol next? Hi, everybody. I'm Carol Aitken and I was facilitating the policy workshop. There were no fisticuffs, sorry. But I think the tension in the debate really personified the dilemma at the heart of the conversation about the decarbonization of heat, which is about cost and affordability.

[02:28] We started off by thinking about how you would fund, how you could fund and what the role of government might be funding a large scale infrastructure. And we came to the conclusion that the starting point needs to be that government has to, governments at all level, Westminster and in Scotland need to recognize that heat network delivery is a national infrastructure priority. We can't meet our climate change targets without heat networks at pace and scale. So if that isn't a priority definition, then we don't know what is.

[02:56] So from a heat networks perspective, it's all about making sure that there's a return on the very considerable capital expenditure that you need to make these projects fly. And how do you do that? And how do you do that without putting the pressure on the consumers who are the end payers at the end of the day? There is definitely a role for government in direct funding, but we also thought that there was much more that could be done in government supporting and promoting patient capital.

[03:23] And from a consumer perspective, one of the problems, a number of problems, one of the problems is a perception about heat networks as not being in front of mind and also being perhaps not the most reliable technology. Based on historic delivery. So there is definitely a role for everybody across the sector, including government, in promoting the benefits of heat networks to a very unsuspecting or very non-receptive consumer base.

[03:55] We also explored a little bit around if heat networks are going to be a low carbon solution. And one of the reasons that people are turning their backs on installing heat networks and other low carbon technologies is because there is a cost of living crisis. And how much sense does it make that at this time of crisis, which is caused by a spike in volatility in fossil fuels, that the answer that people are turning to is more fossil fuels?

[04:21] So that was almost a cognitive dissonance at the center of our debate. But we do recognize that consumer affordability. It needs to be at the heart of the choice of a heat network as a low carbon solution. Pricing regulation and price controls were mentioned in a market where there's little data about what that price control and that price regulation could look like. That's quite difficult. But fundamentally, we need to start seeing the delivery of heat networks through the prism, not just of the developers and operators, but also through the consumer.

[04:53] Thank you.

[05:01] Sad to hear there are no fisticuffs, but I think you touched on a really critical point, which is we have a terrible reputation.

[05:09] Consumers hate us, which is not a great starting point when we can actually solve their problems. Courtney, Nick?

[05:17] We didn't have any fisticuffs, but we had a lively discussion, as most commercial people like to have. It's a tricky one. I think everyone in the room was very much frustrated with where things are. We are in the sense that we are all really passionate about heat networks, and we want to deploy them, but we're finding there's challenges, whether that be a local authority or that be a private developer.

[05:44] There's a few things that came up that were the main challenging points, and that being government funding is there, but it's the right place and the right time. When do we get that government funding? How do we model that government funding? There's also things like anchor loads. Yes.

[06:30] Transparency being key how do we engage with that customer so that they're signing up to heat network understanding what heat network is it's not just a gas boiler and an engineer that services it's a it's a shared network it's complex and it requires it requires infrastructure and shared infrastructure and investment and then the final point I have before I hand over is it's often regulation we need that but we also need them to understand that it's expensive to put he now works in and the price of heat and how do we combat the price of gas you know we're trying to do low carbon heating but we are often against the price of gas today 13 percent hike and price of gas has been announced that the price cap can now meet you know so that's a selling point for us we can actually have more regulation and we can be more forecasted to what the price of the actual heat that they'll be consuming

[07:31] So yeah maybe two points to add on that next to the excellent summary that courtney gave of our workshop is that some insights of the netherlands where I'm from is that especially for those large anchor loads that we need for heating networks is that one of those anchor loads is social housing in the netherlands we see that like social housing are one of the organizations that we start our heating networks on and our feasibility studies but also the developments of heating networks and that's in that kind of case and that the local authorities really support and try to give those social housing organizations the opportunity to explore the heating networks in their first their own property but then of course also the housing that are next to them to ensure that the anchor load is really supportive and the first starting point of heating networks is that social housing is really supportive and the first is that social housing is really supportive and the first and secondly which is also interesting which we discussed in our workshop is that we have some

[08:32] Some capex funding so most of the funding and the commercial help from the government is in the capex but also we need during the lifetime of the heating network we need opex support and that's also what we do in the netherlands already is that we have the sd subsidy which especially for the low carbon heat sources over their kilowatt hours so the energy they produce over their lifetime that they get some subsidy for that to make sure that the low carbon heat sources can be compatible to the gas sources also or other fossil fuels and heating sources to make sure that heating networks that are contributing to a lower carbon usage in scotland can help them to make sure that the cost of also the consumer will be lower because they go the opex will be subsidized.