News
The fact is there is a much better way to generate local heat: heat pumps. These are back-to-front refrigerators. Powered by electricity, they pump heat into the building from the outside – either from the air or from the ground.
The best heat pumps, recently developed in Japan, have a coefficient of performance of 4.9. This means that using 1kWh of electricity, the pump delivers 4.9kWh of heat in the form of hot air or hot water.
Recent trials of heat pumps in Germany have confirmed that ground-source and air-source heat pumps can deliver hot air and hot water with an average coefficient of performance above 3.0.
News
Whatever mix of technologies we choose, decarbonising Britain’s energy system requires a lot of building.
If we find dependence on Saharan sunshine unpalatable, or if we don’t like the idea of building 60 new nuclear power stations, we can revisit our attitude to big renewable facilities in Britain. For every nuclear power station we remove, we must find somewhere to put 2,000 wind turbines. We needa plan that adds up.
taken from a recent TIMES article
