There is more common ground in Britain’s energy debate than Westminster often admits. Most people do not want precious resources wasted; most want lower bills, stronger communities and a more independent energy system. Most would rather see British industry, engineering and infrastructure working harder for British homes than keep sending money abroad for fossil fuels exposed to global shocks.
That is the promise of large-scale heat highways: British heat for British homes. This is not a niche net zero idea. Net zero is a benefit, but it is not the starting point. The starting point is energy security, lower bills and British common sense.
Recent polling shows the public is ready for this transition: 79 per cent support capturing and reusing waste heat from industry to warm homes through heat networks; 74 per cent agree businesses should share excess heat where networks exist; 61 per cent choose large-scale heat networks as protection against future energy price spikes – and these findings were consistent from right to left-leaning voters.
Heat highways are hidden energy infrastructure. Beneath our feet. Out of sight. Delivering peace of mind. Like the gas system before them, they can evolve from local networks into a larger national asset: pipes in the ground, a dependable service, and less technical and climate responsibility pushed on to each household.
The heat sources are everywhere: factories, energy-from-waste plants, water treatment works, substations, data centres, power stations, geothermal and surplus renewable electricity that can be turned into stored heat rather than curtailed. Almost every unit of electricity used by a data centre becomes heat. If captured and shared, the energy is used twice. Previous EnergiRaven and Danish consultancy Viegand Maagøe research found that existing and planned data centres could supply heat to more than six million homes, provided the infrastructure is in place. Where a data centre is built near a town, the surrounding community should not be forced to live with the brutalist monolith without some community benefit.
Our industrial areas and rural fringes can become heat exporters to our villages, towns and cities. Useful heat becomes a commercial asset: lower operating costs, new revenue and a stronger case for investing in Britain. Denmark shows how well this works in practice. In Copenhagen, large-scale district heating is normal. It boasts a city-wide system supplying the overwhelming majority of buildings and roughly half a million households with heat from waste-to-energy, combined heat and power, large heat pumps and recovered heat.
The Manchester heat highway
The same opportunity is now visible in Greater Manchester. Across all ten boroughs, useful heat is already being produced and lost: from power generation, industry, wastewater, energy infrastructure and the next generation of data centres. Much of it is simply vented to the sky, while homes and businesses continue to pay for heat from imported fossil fuels.
Carrington Power Station alone wastes an estimated £24m worth of heat every year. Planned data centres at Carrington and Heywood are expected to draw around 1.5 gigawatts of grid power between them, with almost all of that energy ultimately rejected as heat. That is enough heat to warm over 600,000 homes. Building energy-hungry infrastructure on this scale, without a serious plan to capture and use its waste heat, risks turning a major opportunity into a major oversight.
Based on a detailed study of heat sources and domestic and commercial addressing data from the Ordnance Survey’s National Geographic Database (NGD), EnergiRaven has mapped a Manchester Heat Highway: one regional backbone connecting heat sources with heat demand across Greater Manchester. Heat would move from where it is wasted to where it is needed, and be stored for when it is not. This is not speculative technology. It is the kind of infrastructure already proven over decades in northern Europe, and comparable in scale to Copenhagen’s network.
Manchester industrialised heat once. It can do so again. With major development already under way across Greater Manchester, the choice is whether to keep treating waste heat as an invisible by-product, or turn it into a long-term regional asset: lower bills, stronger local infrastructure and useful British heat serving British homes. Instead of large-scale heat pumps alone, utilising waste heat can save Greater Manchester more than £18bn over a 20-year period on capital expenditure and energy generation.
A holistic approach
Local heat networks distribute warmth through our towns and cities. But instead of each small, disconnected network having to generate expensive heat on site, inter-city heat highways allow low-cost waste heat to be supplied as a service: harvested from the wider region and delivered into local networks where it is needed most.
Once the backbone is in place, new sources can be connected over time. Regions become exporters of green heat, while helping cities overcome one of the biggest barriers to cost-effective decarbonisation: access to affordable, scalable, renewable heat.
Electrification is essential, but not every heating problem needs to be pushed through the electricity system. In Greater Manchester, the analysis indicates enough available waste heat to cover up to 85 per cent of heat demand, with only 15 per cent coming from electrification. By using surplus heat in this way, heat highways can reduce pressure on an already expensive grid build-out. Analysis also shows annual net savings of £2.4bn across the wider electricity system, including half a billion in distribution savings. Fewer unnecessary pylons, less unnecessary reinforcement, and more infrastructure quietly doing its work underground should appeal across political lines.
This is where Britain could learn from Denmark: not because Denmark has avoided overhead electricity lines altogether, but because it has often taken a more joined-up approach to electricity, heat, storage and community benefit. This is not anti-electrification; it is smarter electrification: using electricity where it is best, heat where heat is available, and storage where the system needs flexibility.
The policy steps are clear. Make large heat producers’ heat offtake ready by default. Require data centres, wastewater treatment works and major industrial sites to share useful heat where networks exist or are planned. Use regional heat zoning to connect the dots between heat sources and heat demand. Fund the backbone with long-term, low-interest, government-backed infrastructure finance. Heat highways need public-interest stewardship. The backbone must remain expandable, accountable and built to serve the region for generations.
The country does not lack useful heat; enough heat is wasted each year to warm every home. Britain lacks the hidden infrastructure to capture it, store it and share it. Build that backbone and we can waste less, import less, strengthen regions, support industry and give households lower, steadier bills and confidence that the system is working for them.
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