Vicki Pite from Enfield Climate Action Forum argues the borough’s heat network is a drain on council finances while delivering limited benefits

According to recent reports, Enfield Council has provided £68.8million to a company it owns called Energetik and is considering a further £25.5m in loans.

This is an enormous waste of public money.

The plan is for thousands of homes to be heated by hot water coming from the incinerator located at Edmonton Eco Park, with Energetik delivering this via a vast network of large underground pipes.

Energetik has started laying these pipes on Hertford Road and elsewhere, but the task will take decades to complete, will require far more public money, and cause huge disruption to the road network.

The council is under the impression this approach is the most environmentally-friendly and financially-sensible way to heat homes. Their reasoning is, that since the incinerator is creating heat by burning plastic and waste, that they should utilise the heat to distribute hot water to the borough’s homes.

While this logic might have made sense decades ago, when the only realistic alternatives for heating were inefficient gas boilers or electricity from coal-fired power stations, times have changed. There are now far better alternatives for both the planet and the public finances, such as heat pumps or green electricity, neither of which require huge disruption to the road network, or the enormous sums of money the council is spending on Energetik.

For example, consider a development of 350 new homes in Cockfosters. The council’s solution to providing heat to these homes would involve digging up at least six miles of roads between the incinerator in Edmonton and Cockfosters, to lay the underground pipes needed to transport the hot water.

Laying these pipes is impractical; major roads would need to be dug-up and avoiding the existing underground utilities would increase the complexity of the work. This would all be enormously expensive, take a long time, and be highly disruptive, and would not be as environmentally sound as more modern approaches.

Alternatively, these new homes could be heated via shared heat pumps located on-site. This type of solution would not require extensive roadworks and is quick to install, it is more cost-effective, would not require council funding and would result in lower bills for residents, as well as having an extremely low environmental impact.

The council’s reasoning is outdated, yet their response appears to be to disengage with this inconvenient truth, to bury their heads in the sand, and to waste vast amounts of public money installing a massive and unnecessary underground network of hot water pipes.

Notably, a recent council report states that its investments in Energetik “generated no income” this year and that none is forecast for next year either. The company also does not have an up-to-date business plan, although one is apparently now being drawn up and will be presented “in the next few months”.

Another recent report, on the council’s capital strategy, states that future loans of £25.5m are also planned for Energetik, and that they will be considered alongside the new business plan.

We hope that the council will now see sense and stop throwing good money after bad. Undoubtedly, Enfield’s residents will be able to think of far better uses for the borough’s limited public money.

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