ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses policies adopted in the UK to support district heating. This chapter focuses on the comparison between current policy approaches to heat network financing and three earlier programmes, namely Lead Cities programme, the Community Energy Programme (CEP), and the Low Carbon Infrastructure Fund. The first sense of 'modernisation' directed the programme towards investment by public sector organisations in their own buildings. The focus on specific groups of buildings rather than city-districts or more general interventions in the energy sector has continued to be a feature of heat network development in the UK. The second sense of 'modernisation' that underpinned the Capital Modernisation Fund, of which the CEP was part, related to the ways public sector organisations accounted for current and future costs. Scale is an important dimension to the Green Investment Bank's (GIB) approach to heat networks. Heat maps present heat demand data spatially, and can be used to inform judgements as to where to develop heat networks.
