گرمایش منطقه در انگلستان: تجزیه و تحلیل سیستم های نوآوری فن آوری

District heating infrastructure could contribute to the UK's energy policy goals of decarbonisation, renewable energy deployment, tackling fuel poverty and ensuring energy security. However, while a number of schemes have been developed over the last decade, deployment of the technology remains limited. This paper adopts a Technological Innovation Systems framework to ask what the principal challenges are to significantly scaling up the deployment of DH in the UK. While district heating networks are inherently local infrastructures, they are positioned in regulatory and market contexts organised at larger spatial scales, making geography an important factor and coordination across spatial scales an important policy area for accelerated deployment.

The UK has a long and chequered history of attempts to develop district heating (DH) systems – networks of insulated pipes which deliver heat via steam or hot water to serve the space and water heating demands of multiple buildings (Russell, 1993). UK Government and Devolved Administrations (particularly in Scotland) state that accelerated roll out of the technology would contribute to achieving national energy policy goals (DECC, 2012 and Scottish Government, 2011). However, given a history of failed attempts to establish far-reaching DH programmes in the past, and the small share of DH in the space and water heating market (around 2% in comparison with Denmark's 47% and Sweden's 55%, Euroheat & Power, 2011), the extent to which DH will be deployed, particularly on the timescales established by 2020 carbon and renewable energy targets, is highly uncertain. This paper's central question, therefore is: “what are the principal challenges to significantly scaling up the deployment of DH in the UK?” While the technical components of DH are relatively mature, having been developed over forty years of widespread use in Scandinavia (Dyrelund and Steffensen, 2004, Ericson, 2009, Rutherford, 2008 and Werner, 2010), their deployment in the distinct physical, social and institutional contexts of the UK presents new challenges requiring innovative organisational, contractual and commercial solutions. Two features of the UK context are important here. First, while DH is an inherently local infrastructure (limited to high density areas by financial, rather than physical, constraints, Roberts, 2008), it is nonetheless situated in systems of regulation and government, resource flows and markets which operate at local, regional, national and international scales. Liberalisation and privatisation of the UK energy market have altered the scope for public authorities to direct development of energy systems towards social and environmental goals, and have consolidated existing assets under the control of a small number of companies whose international scope challenges development of locally-specific systems (cf. Rutherford, 2008). Secondly, shifts in the role of local government, from service provision to enabling others to provide services (Bulkeley and Kern, 2006), accompanied by a proliferation of public and private service providers (Cook, 2009 and Leach and Percy-Smith, 2001) has reduced the in-house capacities of local authorities to plan, design and/or operate technically and financially viable schemes. Both features contrast with the municipal energy companies which developed DH in Sweden and Denmark in the twentieth century (Dyrelund and Steffensen, 2004, Summerton, 1992 and Werner, 2010). While the UK is arguably at an extreme end of these spectrums, given its early energy market liberalisation and history of centralised control over local authorities (Wilson and Game, 2002), these broad issues reflect the direction of travel in other European countries (Ericson, 2009, Monstadt, 2007 and Rutherford, 2008). Addressing DH in the UK can therefore shed light on the processes by which contemporary municipal actors can orchestrate or influence local responses to sustainability challenges, and thereby contributes empirical material to a growing literature on the roles of geography in innovation processes (Geels, 2011, Hodson and Marvin, 2010 and Truffer and Coenen, 2012). The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 introduces the Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) analytical framework and source material used. The following three sections apply the analytical framework, Section 3 describing the structure of the TIS, Section 4 detailing the TIS's functional pattern and Section 5 discussing inducement and blocking mechanisms, and key policy issues. Section 6 discusses implications of the analysis for DH in the UK, and draws conclusions.

Development of DH is complex due to its multi-actor and embedded characteristics (Summerton, 1992). Accounts of the historical failure of DH and CHP to play significant roles in the UK's energy system emphasise the long chains of influence from processes and events at a national level to the details of local activity (Russell, 1996). Accordingly, in seeking to assess what are the main challenges to the deployment of district heating in the UK, the TIS analysis has revealed several structural and functional weaknesses spanning local areas, national scales, and inter-linkages between the two. Analytically, the close coupling and long term relationships between actors involved in a DH initiative (as subscribers, project sponsors, designers, contractors, operators and funders) necessitates looking beyond the traditional focus on firm activities common to early innovation systems work (Coenen and Díaz López, 2010). The critical roles attributed to LAs by other actors in the TIS mean limitations on their ability and willingness to act entrepreneurially are key challenges to establishing DH in new areas. However, even where LAs are engaged with DH the formation of a local heat market is influenced both by the difficulty of coordinating multiple local organisations, and the systems of state incentives which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. As has long been the case DH and CHP struggle to find a place within the UK's centralised energy systems, though where earlier research identified the strategic activities of competing interests as key to the marginalisation of the technology (Russell, 1996), the current study emphasises the challenges to participation in established electricity markets and uncertainties in future market conditions. The TIS approach has been accused of “myopia”, focusing on internal system dynamics while ignoring the strategic activities of other actors (Markard and Truffer, 2008). An area of further research would therefore be to consider relationships between the DH TIS and other low carbon heat TISs (including biogas and electric heating, particularly with heat pumps). Analysis in Section 4 illustrates how TIS functions are instantiated and influenced differently at local and non-local levels. While some aspects of these spatial relationship may be relatively obdurate (stemming from the resources and competence of actors at different scales) enhanced performance of TIS functions can, in some cases, be achieved by shifting activities across different scales as the example of heat mapping and the possibility of state underwriting of local projects illustrate. Alongside this vertical dimension, there is scope for greater coordination and knowledge network development across local areas. More broadly, this suggests that, rather than cities “receiving” national transitions there is scope for productive, interactive relationships across local areas and between local and non-local levels in fostering sociotechnical change (cf. Hodson and Marvin, 2010). Complexity poses a challenge to policy makers seeking to stimulate greater deployment of DH. A number of structural and functional weaknesses could conceivably be improved by an increasing scale of activity (virtuous cycles), though these are uncertain. The failure of grant funding programmes to stimulate cost reductions in DH through firms investing in skills and supply chains is instructive. Policy makers could respond to this by ensuring support programmes are (a) tailored to improving overall system performance and (b) embedded in an ongoing monitoring process to identify potential positive externalities of activity which are not being achieved, and to intervene accordingly.