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Kingswood Health Centre Library Aspect Leisure Park Asda Kingswood Museum Retail Park Barrs Court (Ancient Monument) Keynsham Leisure Centre/ Town Hall & Library St John The Baptist Church Keynsham Hospital Cosham Memorial Hospital Church Church Church Garden Centre Keynsham Crematorium Baptist Church Victoria Methodist Church Fire Station Keysham Clinic Police Station John Church St Josephs Church Briarwood School Hillfield Park Baptist Church Bristol Christian Fellowship Soundwell Spiritulist Church Kingswood Leisure Centre Kingswood Foundation Estate Hanham United Reform Church Wesley Memorial Church Hanham Methodist Church Hanham Library & Youth centre R.C. Church All Saints Church Hanham Hall Hospital Church Hillfields Library Avon Valley Railway Bitton Station Soundwell Parish Church City of Bristol College Deer's Wood School Kingswood Fire Station Keynsham KINGSWOOD WARMLEY NORTH COMMON OLDLAND COMMON CADBURY HEATH MOUNT HILL HANHAM HANHAM COMMON LONGWELL GREEN WILLSBRIDGE BITTON SOMERDALE KEYNSHAM STOCKWOOD VALE PARK ESTATE CHANDAG ESTATE FISHPONDS SOUNDWELL volume of institutional funding looking to invest in green energy investment opportunities. It will have share capital of matching value in the joint venture. "The JV will be able to do the 'heavy li• ing' in terms of investment as the council certainly doesn't have £1bn to invest," says Dudd. In setting up a 50:50 joint venture company with a partner consortium, Bristol is striking out in a direction no other UK city has adopted, putting Bristol closer in line with traditions in mainland European cities, where there is both a pattern of co-ownership of energy assets with energy companies, and a commitment to district heating. Bristol is twinned with the German city of Hannover, for ex- ample, where assets are owned by municipal energy company Stadtwerke Hannover, which traces its roots back to 1891. Dis- trict heat networks are also the default in Scandinavia. "If you go to Copenhagen, most people get their heat from district heat- ing systems," says Dudd. Prospecting for a partner Last August, Bristol City Council issued a prospectus detailing local opportunities and sought expressions of interest from the market. It was then swamped by 180 responses that arrived from across Europe, the Far East and China. "We were overwhelmed – we then had to work out the best way to take it forward and at the same time protect Bris- tol's interests." It resolved that the best way forward was to seek a "strategic partner", avoiding a situation where di— erent parties own vari- ous minority stakes in a joint venture company, and could then decide that their interests lie in di— erent directions. The council will soon select a number of bidders with whom it will enter into more detailed negotiations, with the aim of ap- pointing a strategic partner by the end of 2020. The process has to be compliant with EU and UK procurement regulations. But Bristol City Council is setting some important ground rules, which recognise that the pay-back periods for investment in decarbonisation projects can sometimes be numbered in decades rather than years, and that margins vary widely. "For instance heat networks and the installation of domestic insulation and energy e™ ciency measures may o— er very small returns over a long period, so the contractual arrangements will try to prevent selective cherry picking and deliver the whole agenda holistically." Dudd also welcomes moves to introduce more regulation, and possibly a form of licens- ing, into the heat network sector (see page 22), which he feels has been tarnished by some exam- ples of heat network providers exploiting "captive markets". In contrast to the œ rm grip that Ofgem has on the gas and elec- tricity markets, he feels that the lack of regulation has hindered take-up and investment. "There have been horror stories in some locations, where the heat network has been part of a development and formed a natural monopoly. At the moment, people can buy a property, get overcharged and have no recourse, so it's impor- tant that the heat networks we develop o— er a fair return that doesn't exploit people. There has to be regulation." Bristol Energy Service, wholly owned by the council, has already developed and de- livered two small heat network projects, using an EU grant and some funding direct from the council. These now serve œ ve council tower blocks in the south of the city, beneœ tting more than 1,000 social housing properties with further expan- sion underway, and an area of the city centre close to Temple Meads station. "In Redcli— e, where people have switched over to the new system, bills have been reduced by half so it's fulœ lling the objective of cutting fuel poverty," says Dudd. The city council has also introduced new local plan- ning conditions to support the project. "Now planning policy in NETWORK / 19 / DECEMBER 2019 / JANUARY 2020 LOCALISED ENERGY Dr Sara Walker, a reader in energy in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University, is joining the judging panel for the Network Awards 2020. What does she hope will be in store? Q What do you think is the value of awards schemes? Awards enable the sector to showcase and talk about the more innovative things that are happening. We need these conversations, but there are limited opportunities for them. We need cross-sector conversations, and for these to be in a place that's supporting positive action and positive solutions. Q What do you hope to see in the entries? Entries that take a whole systems approach to issues across the sector, particularly in terms of decarbonisation, and entries with evidence of innovation. For innovations, I'd be looking at whether they can scale up, and also be agile. That can be easier if you are a small company, but it's also important to support the larger organisations in the sector and see how their innovative ideas might work more widely. On the other hand, some innovation products might be so niche they wouldn't work elsewhere, so is the innovation applicable enough across the sector to have some impact? Q Which issues aren't getting enough airtime? From a network point of view, we're not seeing much evidence of the different energy networks collaborating, such as gas and electricity, or heat and electricity. That's often for historical and regulatory reasons. But where we have innovation and whole systems thinking, it would also be good to see evidence of collaboration and cross-sector coupling. £ Q Are you aware of any examples of that kind of cross- network collaboration? Here at Newcastle University, we're developing the InTEGREL [Integrated Transport Gas Electric Research Laboratory] demonstrator, with Northern Powergrid and Northern Gas Networks, on a site in Gateshead where the two networks can be operated in tandem. We'll have a range of different technologies on site, such as electric vehicle charging, a hydrogen refuelling station, battery storage. This will enable us to couple the gas network with the electricity network, so that they support each other and not just optimising their own operations. Q What's holding this back? There is some diffi culty with the current Ofgem RIIO regime, which doesn't allow you to make investment decisions in one network to support another network. If you wanted to do that, you'd have to go to Ofgem to request "special permission". There are a lot of regulatory and fi nancial reasons why networks are currently operated very separately. Visit networkawards.co.uk for full details of the 15 categories, and to start your online submission. The entry deadline has been extended until 16 December. N E T W O R K AWA R D S Q & A "We need more joint conversations" AWARDS 2020 DECENTRALISATION