Milton Keynes City Council is set to appoint a heat supplier for a major project setting up a transformative zero carbon heat network.
If approved at a council meeting next week, new city residents could soon be swimming in the UK’s most environmentally friendly pool at Woughton Leisure Centre, browsing books in its greenest library at Central Library or getting married at a Civic building powered by clean and sustainable energy.
Earlier this year, the city council secured £4.35m from the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme to prepare the three buildings to be connected to a heat network. All three buildings are significant energy users. The project is part of the city council’s ambition to become net zero in the next five years.
Heat networks capture and share local heat that would otherwise go to waste, such as data servers or waste processing facilities. For instance, at Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park, 133,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste are processed every year, creating electricity for the city’s fleet of electric bin lorries and also generating heat. Instead of that heat being lost, the city council is exploring the opportunity of transferring it into nearby buildings, cutting bills and emissions.
Heating buildings is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases, and the Government aims for 17% of UK heat to come from local heat networks by 2030. In Milton Keynes, the first phase of the network will supply the Civic building, Central Library and Woughton Leisure Centre offering clean, reliable and affordable alternatives to gas heating.
It will also pave the way for a larger carbon heating system across the city which would heat homes and businesses. This kind of network will protect the city from volatile hikes in gas prices, providing Milton Keynes with greater ‘energy security’.
