A lot of that is provided by natural gas which, as we all know, is a fossil fuel and, as such, produces CO2 emissions. Here, in the UK, around 40% of our energy needs come from heating, and this produces about 25% of our carbon footprint.
Since British houses are so poorly insulated, we Brits need a lot more heating per head than in most countries with a similar climate. As a consequence, we have the highest heating bills in Europe.
This, unfortunately, has tragic results, as more than 3000 Britons a year die as a direct result of being unable to afford to heat their homes. Many of these are elderly.
So, the most cost efficient way for our government to cut the UK's CO2 and save lives, is to have a push to insulate the nation's housing stock.
And yet: the government has axed any and all schemes aimed at helping home owners to insulate their houses; Local councils have little or no budget to improve insulation in social housing; and the government has dropped the "zero-carbon" standard for new builds from 2020 because of pressure from the building industry....
Around 80% of UK homes use natural gas for heating. It's an expensive fuel, subject to price shocks, and we are becoming increasingly dependant on imported gas, something our home-grown fracking industry is unlikely to be able to make a difference on. It makes sense to decarbonise heating.
So what replaces natural gas?
There are a number of workable alternatives:
1) Electric heating
Electric heaters themselves are inefficient and would be a waste of our increasingly lower carbon electricity. It would be better to use the more efficient heat pumps. Heat pumps work like a fridge in a way. They remove heat from the air or ground outside your home and pump it into your home. It's a well known technology and, if used as underfloor heating, in a well insulated house, can provide all the heat you need, even in the depths of winter. However, heat pumps are relatively expensive. So there is unlikely to be strong enough take-up here, even with subsidies from the government.
2) Replace Natural Gas with a low carbon alternative
It is believed that hydrogen could be used instead of natural gas, with little change to the UK's existing gas supply infrastructure. Biogas is another option. It seems likely that low carbon gas of some sort will be a large part of the solution. [Note: There are also hydrogen fuel cell boilers available that can heat your home AND provide electricity, but these are pretty expensive at £12000 and upwards].
3) District heating schemes
I've described a few of these here in the past e.g. where an area in Glasgow is heating homes based on taking the heat from water in abandoned, flooded mines. It works on the same principles as the heat pumps mentioned earlier; In Newcastle, a number of buildings are being heated geothermally from a borehole drilled deep beneath the city.
In fact, there are over 17,000 district heating schemes in the UK. It's thought that can this be scaled up to provide as much as half of our heating.
The government is allegedly looking into all 3 of the above alternatives and is due to break it's long silence on the issue in 2020. It admits that any low carbon plan will have to be rolled out rapidly in the 2020's.
The result is likely to be a mix of these solutions, plus demand reduction by making our housing stock better insulated. If they get it right, we will not only have lower carbon heating, but it will be cheaper for all of us. So the elderly and poor will no longer have to sit in unheated houses for fear of large heating bills.
Other countries face the same questions over natural gas to a greater or lesser extent. So they will face the same choices if they're serious about going carbon neutral. The first countries to decarbonise their heating will gain valuable expertise in the process, and will be able to export their skills and products to rest of the world.
The race is on.
Next in this series: Transport
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