Farms require heat for a range of purposes e.g. grain and vegetable drying; produce chilling; controlled livestock environments; and – not to be forgotten – the farmhouse!).
Most, like many other rural businesses and homes, are not on the mains gas grid. Heating therefore has to be sourced through a range of fuel types – oil, bottled/tanked gas, diesel, biomass and electricity. The impact of using fossil fuels impacts notably on farm GHG emissions. Investment in renewable energy technologies, for heat and electricity, has led to significant reductions in manufacturing costs – the justification for the removal of Feed in Tariff (2019) for electricity production and the Renewable Heat Incentive (2021).
Renewable heat technologies have some way to go to replace the fossil fuels used for this purpose on farms. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) Element Energy Report outlined a number of heating options and deployment levels in their balanced pathway in the UK’s Sixth Carbon Budget (see Table 5). Some of these technologies will be more appropriate for rural areas. A discussion of all of these technologies is outside the scope of this report.
| GROUP | 2025 | 2028 | 2030 | 2040 | 2050 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heat pumps | 240k | 1.3m | 2.7m | 10.5m | 16.2m |
| Hybrid heat pumps | 210k | 450k | 570k | 3m | 4.8m |
| Electric storage | 23k | 56k | 110k | 390k | 490k |
| Electric resistive | 26k | 85k | 180k | 890k | 1.4m |
| Hydrogen boilers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Hydrogen boilers + heat pumps | 3k | 12k | 80k | 2.2m | 3.9m |
Cumulative deployment for selected technology groups. Source: CCC
Heating (and chilling) are energy intensive processes, and demand can be highly seasonally variable. Hence, heat storage, transfer and recovery are increasingly important, particularly where intermittent renewables are involved. Possible farm applications are discussed below, although it should be noted that uncertainty of long-term government support for heat decarbonisation makes it difficult for farm businesses to make investment decisions.