Kate Gilmartin and Anya Temple-Heald
Rossendale Valley Energy
Net Zero Terrace Street is a Rossendale Valley Energy project which will create a community support network to help communities to move to net zero. Our ambition is to bring local people together into a collective, to bring accessible, affordable, low-carbon energy and warm healthy homes with no upfront cost to householders.
We are working with multiple partners and stakeholders to build a ‘one-stop shop’ where a commercial standardised, replicable, scalable model can be developed, and then utilised across multiple areas.
There are nearly 10 million terrace homes in the UK. Many of those will be two or three beds, with limited space and Air Source Heat Pump delivery will be difficult due to space and noise constraints. The main driver for the solution is to find an approach that can be used to decarbonise urban terraced streets, where issues around space constraints and fuel poverty prohibit the deployment of off-the-shelf low-carbon solutions such as air source heat pumps. Choices for consumers are heavily restricted, effectively limiting consumers to the use of electric boilers which will prove both prohibitively expensive to operate, as well as putting huge strains on the electricity system.
Our model aims to provide a community heat service delivered through clusters of shared boreholes and ambient heat loops to provide more efficient community heating with less impact on the grid. Using our partnership with the Centre for Energy Equality and their ‘Fairer Warmth App’, alongside a standing charge repayment system for consumers, our model is set to have wide reach and cross retrofit accessibility barriers to those most in need. This model has the potential to scale, roll out and benefit householders across the UK, that may otherwise be left behind.