Glasgow Launch Event

Vattenfall held a Launch Event for our district heating vision in Glasgow on Thursday 31 March. It was great to be welcomed to Glasgow on such a beautiful evening with our partner Viridor. We were delighted to be able to engage in face to face discussions with key partners that share our vision to support the decarbonisation and regeneration of Glasgow.

The event gave us an opportunity to express our excitement about the decarbonisation proposals that have been set out by Sustainable Glasgow, The Local Development Plan and most recently in Glasgow City Council's Greenprint for Investment. Vattenfall Heat UK and Viridor shared the scale and impact of our growth ambition to heat networks at city scale in Glasgow. These networks enables us, and our partners, to share their heat generation assets and give consumers the benefit from economy of scale - leading to positive impacts on fuel poverty, energy resilience and carbon reduction. We explained how this will deliver wider impacts through new green jobs and believe that heat network could supply the equivalent of 450,000 homes in Glasgow and creating around 900 long term jobs.

Glasgow City Council's Greenprint clearly sets out proposals for a just transition and reaching net zero by taking a whole systems approach to tackling the challenge and there are specific areas where we can see a very clear case for Vattenfall to combine our European leading experience and ability to invest. We believe that it has the potential to expand to a citywide network of the type operated by Vattenfall and serving around 1.9M customers in Berlin, Uppsala and Amsterdam, and proves that these types of projects are possible.

At the event Patrick Harvie, Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants' Rights, explained the central role that district heating must play in the decarbonisation journey that Scottish Government have committed to. He recognised that it will only be delivered through a collaborative approach to projects. Glasgow City Council explained their role in delivering citywide heat networks and are currently working on the Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy (LHEES) and zoning proposals to roll out heat networks in Glasgow.

There is real potential that Glasgow City Council and neighbouring authorities have already identified. We are keen to participate in their development of LHEES and leading to the ambitious expansion of heat networks across the city that could potentially connect across the areas highlighted in the maps that we shared at the event. There are already many exemplar heat networks in this area including the award winning systems at Queens Quay in West Dunbartonshire and the Commonwealth Games Athletes Village. Glasgow University, Strathclyde University and Glasgow Caledonian University operate heat networks and new networks are being built at Clyde Gateway and AMIDS in Renfrewshire.

It is with the support and partnership of Government, the Local Authorities, businesses and individual consumers that we will able to pursue our goal to build Glasgow City Council's heat network and reduce emissions by up to 90%. We welcome the very positive discussions that we were able to have at the event and will continue to work with partners to inform and drive the next phases of the plan.