Piping Hot: Building Heat Networks to Tackle the Climate Emergency

District heat networks are a proven and low-regrets solution that can scale up our use of low-carbon heat. In September 2019 the Scottish Government announced a ‘Heat Networks Bill’ to regulate and accelerate their deployment - this and other support will be required to enable the sector to grow to its full potential. This report sets out the scale of the opportunity and what steps the Scottish Government should take to unlock it. 

Research conducted for this report identified 46 potential heat network projects in Scotland's seven cities. With the right Scottish Government support these could: 

• Deliver 600 GWh of heat per year, the equivalent to 45,000 households
• Save 100,000 tonnes of carbon per year, if using low-carbon sources from day one
• Grow to serve 8% of Scotland’s heat demand by 2030, the equivalent to 460,000 households