Transcript
The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.
Matt Nally
For the final part of this episode with Nick, from our tailor, we’re looking at what does the future of the built environment look like? Specifically around solar heat pumps, and so on. My first question on this, then is how quickly do you think properties or areas can be identified that are suitable for all have the biggest impact perhaps for, you know, solar, and so on?
Nic Cory
Yeah, of course, if I’d sort of tackle heat pumps to begin with, it’s quite an unknown, because whilst we can look externally at properties and look at heat pumps very much relies on the internal construction of the property, what the heating system is, how well insulated that property is. And really, a heat pump needs to be done in line with a deep retrofit. And that comes to the limitation of API’s that that we discussed. In part one, you actually need a surveyor to go in and look at that property, to assess whether that heat pump is going to have those results. So very hard to kind of quantify the the ability for air source heat pumps to help us decarbonize and the impact it will have PV slightly easier to sort of start to quantify that impact. We did a study two months ago, looking at the top 1000 buildings within the country, what are the biggest buildings that should have solar PV on their roof? And what what impact would that have on the electricity system of the UK, actually, those 1000 buildings could fit 1400 megawatts of solar PV produces 1.2 million megawatt hours, big sounds big numbers, but actually, it’s less than half a percent of what the UK needs to draw each each year in terms of electricity. So even if you you tackle the big top percentile, it’s not going to have a significantly material impact on on our on our system. And that’s why it really does need to be that disaggregated approach of sort of throughout the property market, decarbonizing having the impact, it needs to be done. At source. I also touched on the grid limitation that actually, if you, if you covered those 1000 properties, you can’t move that power from one part of the country to the other without significant grid investment. So, it’s not a problem that you can sort of leave to other people. If you’re in a commercial property in you need to decarbonize your supply, you need to start thinking about your rooftop.
Matt Nally
Interesting, actually, there’s quite a few challenges in there to coordinate actually come together, I suppose. On that note, then if it’s if it’s something that we need to do, as overall as a country, what percentage of properties to switch? Do you know that those figures?
Nic Cory
Yeah, so we, we carried out the study of looking at all UK property at all UK residential property came out with 4% currently have solar PV and actually that stacks up with the MCS records that they have that it’s 4% of residential property has PV installed tiny percentage compared to the 67% that actually are suitable for instance? You asked me the same question on commercial. I can’t give you an answer. And it’s bizarre that I can’t give you an answer, but it’s not recorded. We don’t have a you know, as a as a government as a country, we don’t have that central register of commercial PV instals. There’s been sort of attempts at it, but but each kind of attempt is sort of lacking some some elements that allow us to land on a number. And that’s a study we intend to do. Probably looking out, it’s gonna take us probably a year to start covering the country looking for existing solar. We want to start to quantify how much PV is on commercial roofs and where that is within the country.
Matt Nally
And is that something that an AI model would help with, for example, so you take a Google Map scan, for example, and it can potentially pick up what may or may not have an installation? Or is it a more manual process at the moment?
Nic Cory
That’s it’s the AI model. So we need to run it across every property. And that just takes a lot of power to start running that across the country, as well as the various licence fees, we have to pay people for using their imagery and data. Hence why it’ll just take a bit of a while. What we’re looking to do is actually understand what age are the panels on that rooftop? How big are they so we can start to look at how much power is that building? And therefore is the population able to provide into the system? That’s
Matt Nally
interesting. Do you think longer term we need, I suppose a database where we record this type of information? I mean, our age and capacity and, and so on, will that come with great changes? Or is that something that you think there’s gonna be very difficult to put together? Certainly.
Nic Cory
And if we had that kind of national grid structure that we used to have, then then clearly they would, they would know through that permissions process, the fact it’s been devolved to various dinos mean, actually, we’re lacking that information. We’ve got very good visibility on small scale systems just because of the the MCS, you know, very, very good regulation for small scale generation has very good record keeping, is able to give us a good kind of precise number of instals. Above that is where we’re lacking the information. And they’re the material ones, they’re the ones that have an impact on the grid. So we do need to know.
Matt Nally
Awesome. Okay, so I think my final question for episode, and I do have a tendency to say fine on something pops into my head. But my final one is, when we’re building new, new properties, and you mentioned you touched on earlier, the fact that one of the challenges with installing PV, particularly commercial buildings, is having a plant on top of the roofs and it not having obviously thought out beforehand. So there changes in the way we need to build commercial, commercial and resi buildings. thinking through things like, you know, the biodiversity aspects, the the architectural elements of, you know, where we position things to allow solar and heat pumps to be more effective? Or do you think they’re going to be legislated legislatively changes around that, or? I don’t know, this is slightly open question, I think. Yeah,
Nic Cory
I think where we see with new buildings, I mean, biodiversity is clearly important. And I think there is legislation that’s going to come through and impact that, perhaps necessary, because there isn’t a direct financial gain from that. And therefore, you’ve got to kind of actually make sure people do get on that route. Again, put it in I think, concentrating on solar PV developers and portfolio operators still can’t quite get to grips with the lifecycle cost of a building, it is still looking at sort of annual maintenance budgets, or the development costs as opposed to realising you know, generating your own energy and potentially selling that energy to a tenant is a is a way of sort of de risking that property getting a guaranteed income. You know, we’ve got clients where we’ve put PV on their roof. Now, if that property is void, they’re still going to be making 40 50,000 pounds a year selling that energy back to the grid. So gives them a bit of bit of security, that lifecycle costing of actually saying yes, but from year three, year four, that system is going to be saving money, therefore earning money, still hasn’t entered into the majority of developers mindset. And we still have increasingly frustrating conversations where it is very much viewed as a cost as opposed to an opportunity.
Matt Nally
Why do you think that might be out of interest? Is it because who they are selling or leasing a building on to only sees the cost aspect themselves? And they don’t necessarily account for the future? Payback? Or is there something else that might be driving that?
Nic Cory
I come back to, you know, I come back to what I said at the very, very beginning, I’m an accountant by trade and it’s my profession that actually is is hampering a lot of this. We we have to work with portfolios quite hard to try and convince the board you know that actually, it is an investment and not a cost and it’s it’s viewing it as an investment that has a return rather than viewing, you know, any kind of decarbonisation as maintenance, there is still the idea that it’s part of the long term maintenance plan of a property as opposed to actually we’re investing in the property and making those improvements. You kind of touched on tenancies and occupancies. There is also a reluctance with with landlords to change a building mid tenancy or to start to discuss selling energy to the tenant. Because clearly when you start opening in negotiation with a tenant, then negotiation start rent reviews come in and so a lot of this sort of kicked into the long grass in terms Well, when that tendency changes over, we’ll consider it. So, you know, I think landlords are starting to get wise to it. But but those lease lengths drive a lot of that drive a lot of that reluctance.
Matt Nally
Fascinating with that. Thank you very much for coming on today. There’s been a lot of very interesting areas of disgust and looking at the intricacies of how they fit together. If anyone wants to get in touch with you around what you’re doing and to learn more, how do they get in touch? certainly take a look at our website absoulte AB Sol ar.co. UK.
Nic Cory
There you’ll see a kind of selection of case studies the types of sort of public and private clients that we’ve assessed. And we were currently running a partnership with NatWest, any commercial property can can go to that website and request a service survey for free and see what they can do.
Matt Nally
Awesome. Thank you again for coming on. Thank you.