April 2013: Industry journal Utility Week revealed last week that E.ON is planning to support the development of a district heating development in the Greenwich Peninsula. The brief story states that “The energy company is in talks with the Royal Borough of Greenwich to develop heat networks around the O2 Arena”.
E.ON’s website provides some further detail on their role to date: “Initially E.ON undertook a high level technical model of the Greenwich Peninsula to assess and validate both heat demand and the indicative heat network design. A design audit shortly followed. E.ON is advising the Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration venture on the heat network design and specification provided by other consultancies, ensuring it’s sufficiently robust to be adopted by an ESCo (Energy Services Company).”
The March 2012 Greenwich Heat Mapping Study provides much more information, setting out that the “Greenwich Peninsula cluster focuses on the existing district heating network at the Greenwich Millennium Village and the O2 Stadium site and the proposed district heating network for the Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration Limited (GPRL) site. The new redevelopment site consists of 10,000 new homes and 340,000 square meters of mixed use space.”
The study goes on to say that a wider area heat network could in fact be developed by “engaging with the developers for Heart of East Greenwich, Lovell’s Wharf and Enderby Wharf to gain clarity on progress and potential for linking to wider DE network”.
Greenwich’s Climate Change Strategy from 2011 sets out plans for the wider use of decentralised energy across the borough. Greenwich’s Core Strategy consultation also sets out plans for supporting the development of CHP.