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NETWORK / 22 / JUNE 2017 In partnership with Network, Casey Cole and other experts from across the sector came together at an event in London in April to discuss heat network e ciency and the need to quantify the performance of networks. We caught up with him a• er the event to put some questions. How can heat networks help the UK meet its energy goals? When done well, heat networks can deliver low-cost, low-carbon, highly e cient heat to residents. They are not a new phenomenon; they rose to popularity in Scandinavia in the 1970s in the wake of an oil crisis. Today, networks deliver heat to more than 60% of Danish households. Denmark has built an enormous network of pipes underneath its towns and cities to collect waste heat from factories, incinerators and transport systems, combining it with heat generated by solar thermal plants, wind turbines and conventional gas and coal power stations to supply heat cheaply and e ciently. It's a model that is envied by the UK. The Department for Environment and Climate Change – now the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – would like to see the number of UK properties connected to heat networks increased from 2% (just under 200,000 nationwide) to 20% by 2030 and 40% by 2050. The Greater London Authority has set a similarly ambitious target of 25% of its energy supply to come from decentralised sources by 2025. The UK has an untapped reserve of waste heat and could use it in the same way as the Scandinavians. A 2013 report by engineering company Buro Happold found enough heat is wasted in London to meet 70% of the city's heating needs. If all this waste heat was captured and put into district heating, it would make a dramatic di™ erence to our fuel bills, fuel poverty, carbon emissions and fuelšsecurity. There is a huge potential for district heat in the UK, but at the moment we aren't delivering networks to rival the Danish ideal. F E E L I N G T H E H E AT Many heat networks in the UK are not living up to their star billing, warns Casey Cole of Guru Systems, and need to do much better.