Exploring clean heating options for social housing
This webinar explored research carried out by Changeworks for Fife Council and in collaboration with the Centre for Net Zero High Density Buildings to assess clean heating options for social housing.
With proposed policy changes and long-term decarbonisation targets in view, the project set out to help the council develop an evidence-base about clean heating options, to help it develop a strategy for rolling out new technology across its housing stock. The aim of the project was to provide an evidence base to help the council develop a strategy for rolling out clean heating across its housing stock.
Project background and approach
Fife Council’s housing stock includes around 31,000 homes, with most still using polluting heating systems, particularly gas combi boilers. To reach climate targets these will need to be replaced with clean alternatives. The work combined desktop research, multi-criteria decision-making, focus groups and energy modelling to assess which systems could best meet the needs of both landlords and tenants.
Assessing clean heating technologies
A wide range of clean heating and hot water technologies are available and the given the variety of homes in Fife’s housing stock, a one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to be appropriate.
Using a weighted decision-making framework, the project assessed an initial long-list of 30 technologies against key council criteria. In order, these were: user experience, efficiency and running cost, technological maturity, scalability, infrastructure suitability, cost effectiveness and carbon emissions.
This process helped identify a shortlist of systems for deeper analysis: air source and ground source heat pumps, high heat retention storage heaters, direct electric panels, infrared panels, district heat networks, immersion and direct electric water heating and solar thermal water heating.
Key insights on system performance and tenant experience
Discussion of the shortlisted technologies showed that technical performance alone is not enough to determine suitability.
Heat pumps can deliver strong outcomes, but performance depends heavily on good design, correct installation and tenant support. Storage heaters can work well in some contexts, but outcomes are influenced by tariffs, controls and user behaviour.
Ground source heat pumps offer strong efficiency and lower running costs where installation is feasible, while infrared panels may suit some smaller or well-insulated homes but showed mixed evidence on whole-home performance and energy costs. Across the technologies considered, usability, building constraints and tenant understanding emerged as recurring themes.
Modelled running costs
Energy modelling compared shortlisted systems across a range of representative property types of different sizes and fabric efficiencies. The findings showed that well-performing heat pumps were generally cheaper or comparable to gas boilers and significantly cheaper to run than direct electric options.
The modelling also reinforced the importance of fabric efficiency: better-performing homes had lower energy bills, lower fuel poverty risk and more stable internal temperatures (which can improve comfort and wellbeing and reduce risks of damp and mould).
Larger and less efficient homes faced much higher running costs, especially with direct electric systems, underlining the need to consider both building fabric and property size when selecting heating solutions.
Fuel poverty risks
Estimated energy bills were also evaluated for fuel poverty risks. A risk threshold was developed to identify where energy bills could push households into fuel poverty (e.g. by accounting for at least 10% of income, after housing costs). Only heat pump systems were able to meet the lower risk threshold in most cases, with less efficient technologies only suitable in smaller and well insulated properties.
Heating patterns
The modelling also explored how different heating patterns (e.g. more or less heating) can affect costs. This highlighted the different nature of heat pump operation and the risk for social housing tenants.
Scenarios with shorter and more intermittent heating patterns did not achieve the same scale of savings compared to longer heating scenarios, highlighting the risks that social housing tenants fail to achieve the bill savings that could be expected from turning down gas or direct electric systems.
Recommendations for social landlords
The project recommendations focus on improving fabric efficiency to a reasonable level, and prioritisation of efficient (e.g. heat pump) clean heating systems. Solar PV, batteries or hot water diverters can help reduce energy bills although attention must still be paid to fabric efficiency, air tightness and ventilation.
For homes where space or infrastructure constraints limit the use of heat pumps, direct electric systems could have a role but only where properties are well insulated.
Improving homes to a space heating demand of at least 120 kWh/m2 /year was identified as reducing fuel poverty risks and avoiding excess cold in homes outside of heating periods.
To reduce fuel poverty risks in larger and therefore more expensive to heat homes, it is recommended to insulate these properties to reach lower space heating demand targets.
Wider application and next steps
The project’s decision-making framework is intended to be dynamic and adaptable, allowing future technologies or different landlord priorities to be tested over time. Changeworks plans to build on these findings through real-world testing, continued tenant support and further work with social landlords to turn evidence into practical delivery strategies. If your organisation is interested in exploring how this could support the development of a clean heating strategy, please get in touch.
Decarbonisation in harder-to-treat homes such as flats, tenements and tower blocks can be especially complex and will be a focus for the Centre for Net Zero High Density Buildings.