Community Energy Literature Review

Introduction During a recent online forum about the UK’s Warm Homes Plan, a question was asked about the role of air-to-air heat pumps in low-carbon heating policy. The UK plan will be briefly outlined below, followed by a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of air-to-air heat pumps compared to air-to-water heat pumps, based on an EIRO publication. The Warm Homes Plan 2026 The plan is discussed in relation to the housing sector in an article from the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP, 2026). “Homes and buildings account for roughly one-fifth of UK emissions” and £15 billion is to be invested with the aim of upgrading five million homes by 2030. The existing Boiler Upgrade Scheme will continue to offer grants of up to £7,500 per property for installation of heat pumps and a “£2,500 grant per property will also be available for air to air (as opposed to air to water) heat pumps which can also provide cooling.” The UK Warm Homes Plan (DESNZ, 2026) notes the increase in sales...

Introduction The use of digital twins in the planning, construction and operation of buildings was outlined in the previous post. The following discussion touches on the use of genetic algorithms and related software to optimise building design and performance. A selection of papers describing the use of genetic algorithms in this way will be cited together with references to background information. Genetic Algorithms The origins of software based on natural selection have been traced back to early computer scientists such as Alan Turing, John Von Neumann and Norbert Weiner (Mitchell, 1995). Genetic Algorithms (GAs) have found application in many areas where more conventional methods are difficult to apply, such as problems involving many variables. The ‘solutions’ proposed by a GA need to be evaluated, and this may require additional software specific to the problem in hand, in this case the computer modelling of buildings. Building Information Modelling The history of build...

Introduction The idea of a digital twin may stem from the explosion of an oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 space mission of 1970. “NASA employed multiple simulators to evaluate the failure and extended a physical model of the vehicle to include digital components. This “digital twin” was the first of its kind, allowing for a continuous ingestion of data to model the events leading to up to the accident for forensic analysis and exploration of next steps” (NASA, 2021). The importance of accurate digital models is clear in programs such as Artemis, which is intended to facilitate missions to Mars, when the constant communication needed to allow human intervention in case of problems will not be available. Digital twins also have many earth-bound applications such as product research and design, replacing costly prototypes; supply chain operations, giving manufacturers a comprehensive view of logistics, operations and potential bottlenecks; collecting data about products and their use, al...

In May 2025 Riviera Maritime published an article about the anticipated launch of a UK energy auction in the coming August (Foxwell, 2025). While this brief account mentions many of the key features of the auction, it assumes a certain familiarity with the process and its background on the part of its readers, who are likely to be members of the maritime, offshore and energy business communities. Since the subject is of wider interest, some of the issues affecting the auction will be discussed below to provide a more complete picture of the auction and its context. Policy and the energy auctions A recent policy development affecting the auction is the UK’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. This set out targets for clean energy which include producing at least 95% of Great Britain’s generation from clean sources. This would reduce “the carbon intensity of our generation from 171gCO2e/kWh in 2023 to well below 50gCO2e/kWh in 2030.” Achieving the target would require “rapid deployment of ...

In early October a press release from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero confirmed that the UK government had made “up to £21.7 billion of funding available, over 25 years, to make the UK an early leader in 2 growing global sectors, CCUS and hydrogen” (DESNZ, 2024). The article was headed “Government reignites industrial heartlands 10 days out from the International Investment Summit”: the heartlands are in the Northwest and Northeast of England, centred on sites in Teesside and Merseyside, and the summit aims to drive UK economic growth by attracting private sector investment. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is seen by many as “a critical tool in decarbonisation” and is “expected to support 50,000 good, skilled jobs as the sector matures in the 2030s”. The funding “will also help turbocharge the low carbon hydrogen sector by paving the way for the UK’s first large-scale hydrogen production plant, decarbonising vital industrial sectors.” CCUS and hydrogen ar...

A recent BBC news item about global climate change included the claim by a UK academic that we have only to stop emitting carbon and the temperature will start to fall. The speaker perhaps intended to provoke thought rather than to be taken literally; this post will consider some answers to the question of what would happen to earth’s temperature if greenhouse gas emissions could indeed be suddenly and completely stopped. In 2007 NASA’s Earth Observatory Climate blog responded to the question: “Even if all emissions were to stop today, the Earth’s average surface temperature would climb another 0.6 degrees or so over the next several decades before temperatures stopped rising.” The single reason given was that “a great deal of the excess energy is stored in the ocean” and the thermal inertia associated with its huge heat capacity would result in a time lag of several decades before temperatures stopped rising. NASA pointed out that “If we wait until we feel the amount or impact of gl...

The report “Local government and net zero in England” from the National Audit Office (NAO, 2021) estimated that 91% percent of the 232 local authorities in its sample had adopted at least one commitment to decarbonise in line with government net zero policy. It gave the total number of principal local authorities in England – London borough councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan councils, county councils and district councils – as 333. The report focussed on “local authority work that contributes to the UK’s net zero target rather than on climate work more broadly”, on contributions to emissions reductions within the UK, rather than on climate change adaptation or on emissions from imported goods and “on the relationship between the UK government and local authorities in England for net zero.” The list of key findings indicated that central government had not developed with local authorities “any overall expectations about their roles in achieving the national net zero target” and...

A June editorial in Nature (2023) commented that “the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are heading for the rocks” although the “failure to meet even one of the SDGs is not for want of trying.” It referred to the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report, published a few days previously, in which “an independent group of science advisers to the UN proposed a way forwards” (GSDR, 2023). The Nature editorial promised a series of articles looking forward to the September session of the UN General Assembly in New York, at which the Sustainable Development Goals would be debated. The UN described this 78th session as marking “a crucial milestone in the journey towards achieving the 2030 Agenda and the urgent need to put the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) back on track.” (UN, 2023) The General Debate took place between 19 th and 26 th September. On September 20 th , The Guardian carried an article about PM Sunak’s plans to delay some climate targets, in order “to save money fo...