England releases National Heat Map

Will help evolve strategy for more efficient, cleaner community heating

England’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has released a heat map created by the UK organisation, The Centre for Sustainable Energy. Claiming that the heat map is significant because of its scale as it covers the entire country, DECC said that the creation of the National Heat Map is part of a government effort to come up with a comprehensive heat strategy.

The heat strategy will identify how the country supplies and uses heat and create a policy framework to guide future reductions in the amount of energy that is used for heating buildings, DECC said.

According to DECC, the National Heat Map was completed to support planning and deployment of local low-carbon energy projects in England by providing publicly accessible high-resolution web-based maps of heat demand by area.

DECC revealed that the UK uses more energy for heating than for transport or the generation of electricity. This year, the UK will spend around £33 billion on heat across the economy.

In the light of this, the National Heat Map will help local governments and private investors identify places where new district heating networks can be constructed or existing networks expanded to reduce energy costs and increase fuel efficiency.