There is growing criticism of the scheme’s cost and environmental benefits, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Energetik pipes are currently being laid between Edmonton and Ponders End

Local environmental campaigners have raised fresh concerns around the viability of Enfield Council’s district heating network after plans to extend it to Arnos Grove were withdrawn.

Energetik is a council-owned company established to create a 23km (14-mile) network of pipes around the borough that would take waste heat from the incinerator at Edmonton Eco Park and use it to provide central heating for residents.

But there are growing concerns over the scheme’s cost and environmental benefits.

While Arnos Grove already has a “satellite” energy centre as part of Energetik, plans to connect it to the Enfield-wide network and the incinerator have been scuppered by Transport for London (TfL) according to Vicki Pite, a former Labour councillor who is now an environmental campaigner, because it would have “affected” six bus routes.

In response a spokesperson from Energetik said the application was withdrawn due to “connection opportunities arising in different areas of Enfield” and that it now intends to “split” the application into “several parts” with plans to extend to the North Middlesex Hospital area instead.

A TfL spokesperson also said engaging with the transport network was “normal and part of the process” to help minimise ensuing disruption and that it had managed to ensure key junctions were avoided with “localised re-routing”.

Construction work is currently going ahead on a 7km section of the heat network piping connecting Edmonton to Ponders End, but Vicki and fellow campaigner Matt Burn, from Better Homes Enfield, have criticised the removal of trees in Cemetery Walk to allow the pipes to be installed.

Vicki says people in existing homes are not going to see “benefits” but would be “paying the price” of the disruption caused. “What’s happening along that walk [Cemetery], is a beautiful avenue of trees, all cut down,” she said.

“This is a massive development, it’s 20 years in the making and yet it’s not been in any manifestos.”

Regarding replanting, the Energetik spokesperson claimed they worked “closely” with local planning, tree specialists, and the council’s tree officers to “deliver and ensure” that they “minimised the impact” of works on trees where they could.

In terms of Cemetery Walk, Energetik’s spokesperson said: “We have agreed with the council that four trees will be planted for each tree felled. There will be at least a one-for-one replacement for each tree along Cemetery Walk with the remainder of the additional trees being planted elsewhere in the borough as directed by the council.”

But Vicki and Matt say they want a “pause” on the scheme as there are “huge issues” with the way the project is being implemented, houses that were “scheduled to use the network” were still waiting to be connected, and residents in the meantime had to use “gas until they turned on the heat” linking it to the network.

Matt questioned why better environmental alternatives could not be used not only while homes waited to be connected but in place of the Energetik scheme itself, since he and Vicki believed this method of district heating – which relies on plastic and other waste being burnt by the incinerator – was no longer “state of the art” and better alternatives now existed.

He suggested that air pumps, which utilise heat from the outside air to warm homes, would be better for the environment.

The Energetik spokesperson dispute the claim and pointed out the district heating network captured heat that would otherwise would be wasted. They clarified this did not mean they wouldn’t consider alternatives in the future but said at present heat pumps were a “more expensive solution than waste heat”.

But Matt has questioned whether the likely total of £100million needed to deliver the project can be justified and is also concerned with the “monopoly risk” of the council owning it’s own heat supplier.

Energetik says heat networks are a central part of the government’s net-zero plans “with one in five homes expected to receive heat from a heat network by 2050”.

In response to the company’s spokesperson said: “Heat networks fall under the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) remit to protect customers by providing similar standards to the gas and electricity markets.”

The spokesperson also declared they would not “insist on connection” to the network if a “better, lower cost, carbon alternative” that would provide heat for the “same amount of time” as Energetik were available.

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