The Kensa Group has called on the government to eliminate energy crises by investing and legislating a secure, sustainable and self-financing future built on renewable energy grids already available.
The company is backing a three-point plan including:
- Create more green electricity: Around half our electricity is currently made by burning gas, continuing a reliance on foreign supplies and ongoing expenditure. If the UK invested in increasing renewable electricity sources such as offshore wind and solar, we could be more self-sufficient. Decoupling our electricity from gas will allow renewable energy to be delivered more cheaply.
- Balance the levies: The UK needs to address the disproportion between the levies currently causing electricity to be more expensive than gas. We need to balance this bias so it is properly proportioned against carbon emissions. This will allow the cost benefits of efficient low carbon electric technologies, such as heat pumps, to be fully realised.
- Rapidly decarbonise heating: In tandem with the first two steps, Kensa is urging the Government to focus efforts on rapidly decarbonising heating. Switching to low carbon, electric heating will provide a cheaper, greener and more reliable future.
Networked heat pumps provide a viable pathway to a greener Great Britain for the lowest cost, lowest carbon and lowest grid impact. By installing the underground infrastructure required for ground source heat pumps a whole street at a time, properties can be linked to heat networks, such as Heat the Streets in Stithians, Cornwall.
Kensa’s representatives are confident that the plan for a Greener Great Britain can solve the ‘energy trilemma’ currently threatening to plunge two thirds of UK homes into fuel poverty by January and stop the UK falling short of its targets to halt climate change.
Dr Matthew Trewhella, CEO of Kensa Group, said: “It is clear we need a future free from gas – free from price hikes, overseas market forces, air pollution, climate damage and energy instability. We must accept the need to decarbonise and take swift and significant action towards creating a greener Great Britain where clean energy is affordable and accessible.”
Heating is responsible for a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, 24 million homes in the UK are heated by gas boilers, and – as fossil fuel technology can continue to be installed in new build homes up until 2025 and existing homes until 2035 – this number is still rising.
Dr Trewhella added: “The decarbonisation of heating should be a key priority and right now we need bigger-picture thinking. A Networked Heat Pump solution provides a tangible pathway for a widescale and rapid transition away from gas to renewable energy for all properties; commercial, residential homes and tower blocks, and it is available right now as demonstrated by our current project with Thurrock Council.”