Introduction – House Builders
“Energy will be at the centre of planning and how you are going to get low-carbon energy for the site,” said Richard Scott, head of consultancy for E.ON Sustainable Energy.
With the drive on to produce low-carbon communities from Code Level 3 through to 6 and zero carbon, housing developers are being increasingly asked to consider using renewable energy solutions in their housing designs.
Whilst renewable energy solutions are more expensive than traditional fossil fuels solutions in terms of upfront capital, there are other paybacks that can be achieved in terms of gaining the point required to build at Code Level 4 and above, plus they have added appeal for the green minded customer, or those that are looking to ensure future energy security.
The new ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ is aimed at getting development underway whilst keeping vital environmental protections and is to become the cornerstone of a more streamlined planning system that will cut reams of unwieldy planning policy down to a tightly focused National Planning Policy Framework. For housing developers, using renewable energy solutions in their developments could be a way of showing that a development is sustainable, thereby reducing the costs associated with planning delays.
How Ground Source Heat Pumps can provide District/Community Heating
There are other pay backs as well. It may be possible, because of the savings that a home owner would make, to charge a premium on houses that have renewable energy installations. It may even be possible to look at the feasibility of district heating systems which would make economies of scale through pooled resources.
In all of the above scenarios, ground source heat pumps could be part of the solution as a ground source heat pump could significantly reduce the amount of energy that you require for you heating and hot water. According to the Energy Savings Trust heating and hot water accounts for around 60% of your annual spend on energy bills, so the potential long term savings from installing a ground source heat pump could be large.
However, installing a ground source heat pump isn’t going to be possible or right for all properties. We can perform a feasibility assessment of your building/development and the ground that it stands on, to work out whether a ground source heat pump could pay dividends for you and your clients.
Ground source heat pumps are expensive, in the region of thousands of pounds for a single property, or tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of pounds for multi-house developments, so a feasibility assessment that is only hundreds of pounds now could prevent you wasting money.
First we will need some details about your development to make the assessment.
Please call one of our consultants on 01273 699399, we will discuss your requirement and fill in a form for you.
We will then e-mail this form to you to confirm your requirements.
If you are happy with the requirements that we have collected, you can post your agreement by sending back an e-mail to gshp@gesl.net with a Purchase Order (PO) number and we will commence the feasibility assessment.
House Builders – The Process
Geo-Environmental Sciences offer a fully managed service with all costs accounted for and all parts of the process managed by ourselves. We started providing this service in response to requests from clients who had received a GSHP quote, but then had to arrange their own feasibility study, drillers for implementation and then co-ordinate all of the different suppliers. This is difficult for many organisations to manage, as it is outside the remit of their core business activities and the process seemed to be starting in the wrong place, so we put together this service to rectify the problem. Read More »
