For the vast majority of people, their highest carbon emissions will be from heating their homes.
Older systems, such as oil and gas boilers, emit high levels of CO2 but times are starting to change.
From 2025, every new home in the UK will be fitted with a low-carbon heating system and by 2050 every boiler in the UK will be replaced with a low-carbon one to help reduce the carbon footprint.
So what are your options when it comes to low-carbon heating? Let’s take a look.
What Is Low Carbon Heating?
Compared to conventional heating systems, low-carbon heating releases very little carbon emissions when they are used.
Rather than using fossil fuels as their method for creating heat, low-carbon heating systems will instead use sustainable fuel sources.
This can be achieved in a variety of ways so there are a few different low-carbon heating options to choose from.
Electric Combi Boiler
Electric combi boilers have grown in popularity in recent years as a greener alternative to standard gas or oil boilers.
If you have solar panels installed in your house, they can be the perfect low-carbon heating system.
And if your power supplier uses sustainable fuels (many of them now do) then an electric combi boiler will still be helping to reduce your carbon emissions.
Electric combi boilers are more compact than standard boilers and make less noise when they are running.
So they can be installed into homes where a gas boiler would be unfeasible by companies like PlumbGuardian, and they can be fitted into compact areas where you wouldn’t normally be able to fit a boiler.
They also don’t require a flue and they reach much lower temperatures so their parts may need replacing less often.
They are, however, more expensive to run and they can only heat water on demand, rather than continuously.
Biomass Boilers
A biomass boiler is very similar to a gas boiler but instead of using gas as a fuel source, it burns wood pellets.
At first glance, this may not seem like a greener option but, actually, using wood pellets is very nearly carbon-neutral since any CO2 that is released during burning would have been absorbed by the tree when it was alive.
Using waste wood that would have gone to landfills converted to wood pellets to be used in biomass boilers and stoves makes for a low-carbon heating system that also helps to reduce unnecessary waste.
You can use any wood in a biomass boiler, so if you find any logs lying around, this can be a free source of fuel.
Unlike electric combi boilers, a biomass boiler is likely to take up more room than a standard gas boiler.
This is because you will need a place to store your wood pellets/other wood and, most likely, a hopper to feed them into the boiler.
The ash can also be used as a fertilizer for your garden.
Hydrogen Boilers
Individual households choosing low-carbon heating systems won’t be enough on its own for the government to meet its net-zero carbon emissions goal.
That’s why they are planning a complete overhaul of the fuel grid to replace fossil fuels with a renewable energy source.
Natural gas used for heating accounts for a third of the country’s carbon emissions so replacing it will help to lower these emissions greatly.
The replacement energy source that the government has landed on is hydrogen.
This change won’t happen in one step. First, the hydrogen will be blended with the natural gas, and there are already boilers on the market that are ready to use this blended solution.
These can accept 20% hydrogen in their gas supply. This article on hydrogen boilers by Easy Boiler Company describes in detail how they work.
Eventually, the country’s gas boilers will be entirely replaced with boilers that solely run on hydrogen but that is a long way off.
In fact, there aren’t any 100% hydrogen boilers available just yet. When they are, you can expect them to work in exactly the same way as your current gas boiler.
They will be connected to the gas network in the same way and the fuel will be used for heating and hot water in the exact same way.
So on a practical level, no one should notice any difference when using a hydrogen boiler compared to a gas one.
Micro-CHP Systems
Combined heat and power (CHP) boilers can often use fossil fuels, unlike many of the other low-carbon options.
What makes them low-carbon, however, is their efficiency. In most homes, a gas boiler is used to create the energy to heat the home and the water whereas electricity is obtained from the power grid.
There is a large amount of energy loss when obtaining electricity from the grid, due to the logistics in supplying the electricity to homes.
CHP systems have already been in use for decades in larger buildings that require a lot of energy but micro-CHP systems are becoming a popular choice for homes.
CHP boilers create both electricity and heat in a single simultaneous process.
The production of electricity produces heat and then this heat is directed back out into the heating system.
So rather than obtaining heat and electricity from two different sources, one of which uses fossil fuels and the other that is inefficient, micro-CHP boilers use one fuel source to create both heat and electricity.
This makes them more efficient which means that they are both cheaper to run and low-carbon.
Micro-CHP boilers also don’t have to be gas boilers.
They can be biomass, hydrogen, or use other low-carbon energy sources such as solar power.
In these situations, they have the potential to have the most impact on lowering carbon emissions.
The Bottom Line
Finding an alternative to fossil fuel options, such as gas and oil, for heating homes is a priority for the government and it is also a priority for many homeowners.
Thankfully, there are a variety of low-carbon heating systems that are available today, and even more that will be available in the near future.
If you are looking for a greener way to heat your home, then there are lots of options to choose from, many of which will also help you to save on your energy bills.
After all, what is low carbon heating but a way to do better for the environment while also improving your own standard of living?