The 78 council-owned apartments in the former Scott Harbour office block now receive sustainable heat and hot water
Just in time for this week’s bracing weather, a social housing development in Cardiff Bay is the first residential building in the city to be connected up to the council’s new district heat network.
The Scott Harbour building, now connected to the Cardiff Heat Network; photo courtesy of Cardiff Council
The Cardiff Heat Network captures heat produced as a by-product of another sustainable enterprise, the Cardiff Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) at nearby Trent Park.
Run by Viridor, the this is the largest ERF in Wales. It treats waste from the local authority and business contracts, and diverts at least 95% of the region’s residual waste away from landfill. In doing so, it generates 266 MWh of electricity for the National Grid. In the process, the electricity-generating turbines produce steam; the new heat network puts that steam to useful work.
Through a 4.9 km network of highly insulated pipes, the heat is funnelled to buildings across Cardiff Bay, where it provides a sustainable source of heat and hot water. Cardiff & Vale College already receives heat from the network and over coming weeks many more buildings will be connected, including Wales Millennium Centre and the Senedd.
Once completed, the network is expected to save the equivalent of 10,000 tonnes of carbon each year, or about the same as switching off 3,700 gas boilers.
The network is designed to be ‘heat source neutral’, so has the potential to source heat from other sources such as the groundwater or deep geothermal heat beneath the city. This should secure its long-term future.
The £15.5m heat network project was funded through the UK government’s Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP) and a loan from the Welsh government. The project has been led by Cardiff Council and delivered through its arm’s-length company, Cardiff Heat Network Ltd.
The company is currently in discussion with further potential customers based in the vicinity and is exploring funding options for a potential extension of the network into the city centre.
Cllr Dan De’Ath, Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Strategic Planning and Transport at Cardiff Council, says: ‘The heat network provides customers with an affordable, reliable and sustainable source of heat and hot water and has the scope to expand further over time. The moment a building connects, it eliminates the need for gas boilers and delivers an 80% cut in carbon emissions.
‘It’s a complicated project to deliver, but an incredibly simple idea at heart – capturing heat that already exists but is currently wasted and transporting it to where it can be used instead of burning fossil fuels.
‘What we’ve built is the first city-scale network of its kind in Wales. It represents a significant investment in the long-term infrastructure needed to ensure we play our part in tackling the global challenge of climate change, and build a stronger, fairer, greener Cardiff.’
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