If a Problem is Too Hard Make it Bigger

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Do we need to look differently at the problem of decarbonising heat?

“If a problem is too hard make it bigger”. That was a line from General Eisenhower that Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute quoted at an Oxford Martin School event last week reflecting on future energy challenges.

In GB we all know that one of the most difficult energy problems currently is what to do about heat. At the minute every paper on the subject (including, I admit, one I’ve been working on for NEA) trots out the same three options – electrification, district heating or hydrogen.

But are we thinking too narrowly? If we redefine the problem (to something “bigger”) does that open up new solutions? At the minute, we are asking how we heat our houses but what we really need to think about is how we keep ourselves warm.

Can we just heat the immediate space that we are in (in the same way that we increasingly have automatic light sensors)? Not with conventional heating but manufacturers of new “infrared” heaters claim that they heat objects (people) not the air and hence can provide targeted electric heat solutions at a much reduced cost. Less futuristically a heated seat can help keep you warm when you are sitting still and your body is producing less heat – a potential boon for less mobile elderly people.

Can we do more to retain more of the heat that our bodies produce? “Put on a jumper” seems an unsympathetic response to someone worried about heating costs but with advances in materials technology could we all be wearing “smart” jumpers that maintain a steady temperature as we move around between locations?

And if heating our homes is still important then I’ve been saying for some time at conferences that what we need is insulating wallpaper to provide an easy solution for our older housing stock, that doesn’t reduce floor space. It seems that now exists – and over the next 20 years we could hope for the technology to improve further.

Of course people have got used to having their homes heated and changing consumer behaviour is hard. But if we all sit around planning how consumers will be provided with heat in the future we need to be careful that unless what is offered is clearly better than what people had before they may find different ways of meeting their needs. And we may have just built the next generation of canals.

The Energy Systems Catapult have done some work on what consumers value about heat but it’s not clear how much it is shaping their overall thinking. Ofgem in their Future Insights paper on Decarbonisation of Heat remain in the mainstream despite their ambition to be open to disruptive ideas.