Heat Networks have been proven internationally as a reliable, cost-effective and low carbon means of providing heating yet in the UK just 2% of buildings are heated this way. To provide much needed scale to this market, the Government is committed to investing £320m of support to individual projects across England and Wales.  

Heat networks take heat from a centralised source and deliver it to a number of different buildings. They form an important part of the UK’s plan to decarbonise heating, in particular in cities and high-density areas. Heat networks can decarbonise more easily than most other heat sources because new technologies can be added to the system with little disruption to individual householders.  

BEIS commissioned Risk Solutions, along with our partners the Tavistock Institute and London Economics, to evaluate HNIP.  We worked with BEIS to develop a theory of change for HNIP, and are delivering a realist-framed evaluation, comprising several waves of process and impact evaluation, feeding lessons learned back to our client as the evaluation proceeds.