WARRINGTON Borough Council has been awarded a £600,000 grant to help towards the installation of a “green” ground source heat pump heating system in the Town Hall.
The scheme is intended to make the historic building much more carbon-efficient in line with efforts to address the climate emergency.
The planned heat pump system is designed to replace the current inefficient gas heating plant which is at the end of its useful life. There is national focus on encouraging the switch from burning gas for heating, to the use of carbon-efficient heat pumps, in order to tackle climate change.
The proposed system will involve a ground source heat pump, an electric powered heating system that captures renewable heat from the ground, compressing this energy into a higher temperature sufficient to provide heat for a building. The Town Hall scheme will seek to extract heat from boreholes sunk into the surrounding grounds to heat the main building, alongside the east and west annexes.
With the council’s successful application to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, work is now underway on a detailed design. As the Town Hall is a listed building, the new heating scheme will need Listed Building Consent before it can be installed.
The project is one of the latest initiatives in the council’s mission to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
The council has previous experience with ground source heat pumps, with these energy efficient measures installed in the 10 houses that the council owns for people experiencing homelessness. The council’s housing company, Incrementum Housing, is also building 162 new low-carbon homes with these heat pumps, alongside solar panels, batteries and electric vehicle (EV) charging points.
The council has also been working with various partners on a government-funded innovation project called Rewire. This is looking at ways to help decarbonise Warrington’s energy system as a whole in the most cost-effective way. The Town Hall project is expected to draw on some of the technologies that will be needed to build a wider smart energy system.
Cllr David Ellis, chair of Warrington’s Climate Emergency Commission, said: “I’m delighted the council has been successful in securing funds to progress the planned heat pump scheme for the Town Hall and annexes.
“These much-needed improvements to the building’s heating system should help to cut carbon emissions and contribute to making these buildings cleaner and greener for years to come.”
Cabinet member for environment, housing and public protection, Cllr Hitesh Patel said: “This is a welcome step on our mission to become a greener council and achieve carbon neutrality. It builds on the success of numerous projects we have initiated over the last decade.
“It is one project of many on our sustainability journey, which includes delivering our solar farms, converting our diesel bus fleet to electric and working with businesses and housing providers to ensure we continue to invest in green infrastructure throughout the borough.”
For more information about the Climate Emergency and what is being done in Warrington, visit warrington.gov.uk/climate-emergency.
1 Comment
Using a heat pump system is definitely a good move . . . but £600k? Seems absurdly high.
Did the council indicate what their current fuel bill is? I’m wondering about the payback period.