Spatial and temporal data to study residential heat decarbonisation pathways in England and Wales

Abstract

The decarbonisation of residential heating is crucial if the net-zero target in the United Kingdom is going to be achieved. This paper describes methods to produce data to quantify the impacts of residential heat decarbonisation on the energy supply infrastructure across England and Wales. For the year 2018, annual heat demand for a range of dwellings was estimated for almost 35,000 local areas (known as Lower Layer Super Output Areas: LSOAs). Energy savings through implementing the potential energy efficiency measures and the indicative costs of the energy efficiency measures were quantified. Profiles were synthesised for heat production and energy demand of selected heating technologies using average daily temperature and data from trial projects. These profiles were created to study the impacts of different types of heating technology in each LSOA under user-defined heat decarbonisation pathways. Data describing the dwelling stock, heating technologies, annual heat demand for each LSOA, indicative costs of energy efficiency improvements for each local authority and the profiles for each technology were created.

Fig. 1

Overview of the methodologies used to produce the datasets of this study.

Fig. 2

Example of an energy performance certificate for a detached house.

Fig. 3

Diagram of the process used to estimate the heat demand of an LSOA.

Fig. 4

Flow diagram showing the steps to create the machine learning models of this study.

Fig. 5

Process to produce half-hourly electricity demand and heat production for HPs with two distinct models HP_heat and HP_electricity.

Fig. 6

Flow chart of an example model which combines the predictions of two sub-models to improve the accuracy in predicting peaks. ${\widehat{Q}}_t$ is the predicted value of a model for time t with t = 1, 2, …, H.

Fig. 7

Maps of the annual heat demand in GWh before and after energy efficiency measures at LSOA level of England and Wales based on the number of dwellings in 2018.

Fig. 8

The left-hand chart shows the number of LSOAs based on the total residential heat demand before and after considering energy efficiency measures based on 2018 data. The right-hand chart shows the heat demand savings by implementing the energy efficiency measures.

Fig. 9

Costs (million pounds) of implementing the energy efficiency measures in dwellings in each local authority in England and Wales.

Fig. 10

Normalised heat production and electricity demand of an ASHP synthesised using the 2013 daily average OAT profile.

Fig. 11

Comparison of the average annual heat demand of dwellings heated with gas, electricity and non-metered fuels from the CSE report and the EPC-based method aggregated for England and Wales. For non-metered heated dwellings, only detached dwellings were used.

Fig. 12

Box plots showing the differences of the heat from gas calculated using BEIS data compared to the heat from gas data from the EPC-based method for the LSOAs in England and Wales based on their rurality classification. The chart was truncated but there are 39 LSOAs with differences above + 100% in “Urban” and “Village, Town and Fringe” areas.

Fig. 13

Maps showing differences between the annual heat production by gas boilers calculated from BEIS data and the annual heat production estimated by the EPC-based method, for LSOAs that have different rurality characteristics.

Fig. 14

Left-hand panel: the daily average COP of ASHPs from this study and four external sources. Right-hand panel: shows the daily average COP of GSHPs from this study and two external sources.

Fig. 15

Diagram showing how the datasets can be used to produce half-hourly heat production and energy demand profiles.