The Challegnge of Rural Energy Decarbonisation of Heat in the UK

The UK Government’s attention has shifted towards decarbonising heat with particular research attention towards transitioning away from natural gas as a heating fuel, moving to decarbonised alternatives, such as hydrogen. This research will serve useful to looking at the best way to decarbonise heating in, but not specifically, rural energy and heating, where this work focuses on. Over 20% of UK homes are off the natural gas grid of which 76% use heating oil, coal and other similar fuels to heat their homes. Little research has been conducted to look at what technologies and approaches can work best for rural decarbonisation. There are unique challenges to rural energy, and particularly heating, that have been scarcely addressed in government policy and wider research, such as older infrastructure, older non-standard buildings and a generally older demographic that add extra consideration to community understanding and cost to decarbonise rural energy. This paper will look at the specific challenges of rural energy decarbonisation and potential approaches to mitigate some of these challenges, such as consolidating electricity, heating and transport fuels with fewer types of biofuels and e-fuels (e.g. green hydrogen) to optimise the unit cost of energy across the different modes. Furthermore, investigation into what techno-socio-economic factors may further encourage greener energy technology adoption, not just on a carbon basis, but on what may work better for people in the community to reach net zero, will be highlighted. This will be different to those on key factors, such as what heating fuel is currently used, the fabric of the building (how heat efficient/insulated the building currently is), the cost margins of current technologies, community attitude and affordability towards green technologies. A point often said is that there is no one size fits all approach. This paper will look at how to approach rural energy heat decarbonisation. Finding heat pump and wood biomass fuels/technologies to be both the least polluting and most cost effective when solely considering operational cost and emissions across three building types.