Heating should be a part of building law, Scottish experts argue

Housing developers should be forced to consider low cost communal heating systems as part of a revamped set of planning rules, Scottish heat experts have argued.

Trade organisation Scottish Renewables says the move would slash the number of city households living in fuel poverty, and argue that Glasgow should follow into the footsteps of London, Manchester, Birmingham or Liverpool, where councils already require those building homes or offices to first consider affordable, low carbon alternatives to gas boilers or electric heaters.

The Scottish Government has set a target that 11% of heat should come from renewables by 2020 – the figure is at present 3%.

Stephanie Clark, policy manager at Scottish Renewables, said: “As a society, we take warm homes and workplaces and constant hot water from granted.

“But if we are to have any chance of meeting our 2020 targets, we urgently need to re-think our relationship with heat and the way it is generated, transported and used.”

Cut your energy consumption and spending with HeatingSave

Replacing your central heating clock with a HeatingSave energy and boiler management controller is the quickest way of beating those tariff rises and saving on energy costs, often paying for itself in less than a year but almost always in less than 3 years.

HeatingSave can cut your energy usage by 20% to 30% with its energy management control, as its internal microprocessor constantly calculates and improves the efficiency and savings of your central heating system.

Using HeatingSave, simply choose the room temperature and the hot water you want, and when, and HeatingSave does the rest. It works with all central heating systems – oil, gas or coal – and links up with a PC to produce reports and graphs to fashion a powerful and complete energy management system.

The system is backed by the Carbon Trust and the Energy Savings Trust.