Adveco looks at how the care sector in the UK can best take advantage of the evolving renewable heating market. In this two-part article, we start by gauging the sector’s challenge and consider what it will take to adopt a net zero approach to operations to achieve sustainable care homes…
Part 1: What Cost Net Zero?
With advancements in medical technology and an increasingly aging population UK residential care facilities, with their focus on patient comfort and enhanced efficiency, are being seen as one of the key proving grounds for the Government’s ambitious net-zero targets. According to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), commercial businesses account for 17% of total carbon emissions, 40% of which are generated through the process of heating, cooling and lighting buildings. When demands are high, water heating has the potential to be the most energy-intensive process of all, accounting for up to 30% of daily energy demands making it an obvious target for making quick wins.
Despite this, government support for the commercial sector has been lacking, which has muddied the waters for many decision-makers. Recent fluctuations in energy prices have added further concerns over the operational costs of new technologies, although many would argue that renewables present an opportunity to obtain energy independence and potentially lower running costs in the long term. In general terms, most organisations today claim to be prioritising sustainability, to meet mandated environmental reporting needs, and building regulations to attract environmentally conscious customers and investment, with renewable heating seen as a potential contributor to all these goals. However, it is estimated that at least 70% of the existing care home building stock will still be in use by 2050 creating a huge challenge in terms of refurbishing buildings with energy-efficient technologies to create more sustainable care homes.
The UK renewable heating market for commercial buildings is projected to experience significant growth in the coming years, with air source heat pumps (ASHPs) expected to be the dominant technology due to their versatility and increasing efficiency. Electric boilers are expected to become more competitive as renewable energy sources and grid infrastructure improve, whilst solar PV for space heating and solar thermal systems for applications with high hot water demand, will likely find wider adoption through building design optimisation. Hybrid systems, combining elements of these different technologies and existing systems also offer a workable option for more sustainable care homes.
As a hot water specialist with a long history of working with more sustainable care homes, Adveco has considerable experience dealing with the numerous challenges they can face when securing resilient, guaranteed hot water at a realistic cost. To better understand how care homes can make the transition to alternative low-cost water heating we need to recognise the current state of play across the care home sector. Adveco has therefore commissioned a research report on the adoption of technology for water heating, tracking new build and refurbishment projects over the past five years to gain insight into the scale of the challenge.
Accounting for approximately 100 new care home sites each year, new builds, with higher levels of insulation and a moratorium on new gas connections, will by default specify renewables to meet the latest building regulations. Applications for new care homes rose steadily across the period from 110 in 2019 to 221 in 2022, with actual completed projects slightly below these figures.
By far the most work carried out was in the refurbishing of existing care home properties, of which there are more than 17,000 in the UK. Of those undertaking retrofit or replacement of existing systems, our research indicates that gas-fired water heating continues to dominate. Over the course of five years (2019 and 2023), it accounted for 88% of recorded installations across the sector making it by far the most popular choice for supplying heating and hot water demands.
With low-carbon new builds accounting for just 0.6% annually of the total care home built estate in the UK the scale of the challenge becomes clear. Although all lower carbon technologies (electric water heating, heat pumps and solar thermal) are showing increasing specification, adoption rates have remained generally low. Of these low-carbon technologies ASHPs have exhibited a more rapid uptake in the past two years, but the number of sites deploying the technology remains lower than expected and are almost exclusively associated with new build. When questioning consultants and contractors, heat pumps will always be specified for heating, most realise that heating and hot water in many cases are best left separate, which from a design perspective makes absolute sense.
Due to building regulations, renewable, all-electric hot water systems are being specified for new builds, but when dealing with retrofit the majority of those questioned confirmed that while initially leaning toward heat pumps, they were encountering problems with cost, infrastructure and design.
The cost has been a particular hurdle for the sector, not only in terms of capital investment but especially concerns over operational costs which climb when transitioning to electricity. At the time of writing, gas costs 5.48p per kWh (kilowatt hour), versus electricity, at 22.36p per kWh which can lead to substantially increased operating costs, especially given the typical daily high demands for hot water. It is also worth remembering that gas-fired power stations generate a considerable proportion of grid electricity (as high as 20%). Should gas prices climb, so will grid electricity prices. This will continue to be the case until the grid is fully green.
Hence the interest in energy independence, which is obtained using true renewables such as wind and solar. Heat pumps, however, are not a ‘true’ renewable technology, despite being cited and pushed at the highest levels of government as a ‘renewable technology’. ASHPs are without doubt one of the easier-to-implement technologies, using a reverse refrigerating circuit to extract heat from the air, even when ambient temperatures drop during the winter months.
The efficiency of a heat pump is measured by its COP (coefficient of performance) which defines how much energy it uses compared to the heat energy it generates. The higher the number the better. The COP will fluctuate with external temperatures so the seasonal COP which averages the efficiency across the year is a better means of assessing a unit’s potential. As the ambient temperatures drop the heat pump will demand more electrical energy to run the compressor and maintain necessary output temperatures. This is where heat pumps have a weakness because they were designed to operate at low working flow temperatures (35°) to supply radiators and underfloor heating, not the more stringent heating requirements of water (+60°C) required to prevent legionella.
This additional electrical energy required to raise temperatures will typically come from the grid. This means building in sustainability with ASHP technology alone can deliver considerable increases in operational costs if not approached with care and consideration. Of more concern is that electric water heating can place a significant additional load on a building’s electrical system.
In the concluding part on sustainable care homes, we consider how combining new technologies and existing systems in a hybrid approach could be the best option currently for the care sector…
