East of England: London’s Green Heating Powerhouse
There’s little doubt that Labour’s goal to deliver clean power by 2030 – its environmental legacy in the making – will indelibly transform our electricity sector. But despite its towering ambitions and breakneck development pace, the action plan has one gaping flaw: it completely neglects heating.
Amid the public furore around building new solar and wind farms in a mad sprint towards net zero, we seem to have forgotten the value – and, indeed, the fundamental common sense – of maximising our existing resources. The mantra of ‘waste not, want not’ has served us well for generations, yet clean power by 2030 is solely an energy plan, not an energy-efficiency plan.
With billions of taxpayer pounds earmarked for a new high-voltage power network across East Anglia, we can’t miss the opportunity to combine it with green heating infrastructure that can slash emissions and help eradicate our fuel poverty crisis. After all, who in their right mind would build a new home with power, but no heat?
The Viking Link
The Viking Link is a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnector spanning 765 kilometres between Revsing in South Jutland, Denmark, and Bicker Fen in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, making it the world’s longest interconnector. Jointly owned by Denmark’s Energinet and the UK’s National Grid, it commenced operations on 29 December 2023. The link enables bidirectional electricity flow, allowing both countries to import and export power based on demand and generation capacity, thereby enhancing supply reliability and flexibility. The one-hour time difference between Denmark and the UK results in staggered peak electricity demand times, facilitating more efficient sharing of renewable energy and reducing the overall capacity needed. In its first three quarters of operation, approximately 5,000 GWh of electricity have been transmitted via the link, with about 80% flowing from Denmark to the UK.
Power and Heat: The Overlooked Potential of Energy Infrastructure
For years, Denmark maintained a price cap on surplus heat to protect district heating consumers from excessive costs. While well-intended, this policy inadvertently discouraged investment in heat recovery, limiting the use of valuable excess heat from industries, data centres, and energy infrastructure. Recognizing this missed opportunity, the Danish government removed the cap in January 2025, enabling surplus heat to play a greater role in the country’s heating supply.
One of the first major projects to benefit is Vejen District Heating, which can now utilize excess heat from the Viking Link converter station in Revsing. This waste heat has the potential to replace 50% of Vejen Varmeværk’s current heat production—reducing reliance on biomass and allowing more homes to switch from gas to district heating. To make this happen, Vejen Varmeværk is investing approximately DKK 120 million (around £13.4 million) in a 5-kilometre transmission line, heat pumps, and control systems to integrate this otherwise lost heat into its network.
Denmark has chosen to maximize efficiency, using energy that would otherwise be wasted. Yet just across the North Sea, the UK has a converter station from the very same Viking Link—but no plans to recover and use its surplus heat. Couldn’t we be doing the same? At a time when energy efficiency and sustainability are more important than ever, is the UK missing an opportunity to make better use of the energy we already have?
The East of England: London’s Unsung Energy Powerhouse
London’s iconic Battersea Power Station once supplied much of the city’s electricity, with its waste heat even used to warm homes in Pimlico. Today, the vast brick structure, once a symbol of industrial energy, has been transformed into luxury flats, shops, and restaurants—its chimneys now a backdrop for high end living rather than power generation. Meanwhile, most of London’s electricity now comes from the East of England, meaning that, in effect, Battersea has been relocated to East Anglia.But while the power has moved, the heat has been forgotten. Once an integral part of the city’s energy system, waste heat is now left to dissipate instead of being captured for heating homes.
Along with powering our largest city, the East of England is vital to meeting our goal of clean power by 2030, as it requires transmitting huge volumes of green electricity from the east coast into London. Much of it will come from offshore wind farms – including several new projects totalling multiple gigawatts – along with the subsea interconnectors that link our power grid with countries like Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.
To deliver all this power, our National Energy System Operator, NESO, aims to build a 180 km network of high-voltage electricity pylons and substations between Norwich and Tilbury. NESO has also proposed two ‘energy superhubs’ near Suffolk’s coast, which have famously drawn the ire of the region’s own Ralph Fiennes, who claims they risk ‘creating acres of steel and concrete in areas of profound natural beauty’ and should be built offshore instead. While the siting of the superhubsmremains to be seen, the new long-range power network, part of Labour’s ‘Great Grid Upgrade’, is vital to meeting our 2030 clean power goal.
While large-scale electrical infrastructure is rarely popular with its host communities, the silver lining is that everywhere power goes, it generates waste heat – and lots of it. To build a circular economy, we must also realise that energy needn’t be a zero-sum contest in which one person’s gain is another person’s loss. For example, while transmitting green electricity, East Anglian councils could capture waste heat from the new electrical substations to heat local homes and, crucially, export to London. This scenario is the very embodiment of a ‘win-win’: East Anglia generates additional income for future decarbonisation efforts, and London secures the cheap green heat it so dearly needs. By advancing our power and heating systems in tandem, we can decarbonise both sectors and eliminate our dependence on expensive and polluting natural gas.
Integrate Sectors. Build Energy Resilience.
Heat Reservoirs: A Green Vision for East Anglia
With the East of England becoming a superhub of power generation and transmission, it’s the perfect strategic location for a large-scale underground thermal energy store, called a heat reservoir. Filled with hot water, these stadium-sized pits can store substantial volumes of waste heat for days, weeks, or even entire seasons, completely decoupling supply from demand. Heat reservoirs are also, by their nature, simple, safe, and sustainable – qualities we need to advance our energy transition without harming people or the environment. They also drive down heating costs through distinct economies of scale: in Denmark, the engineers who design these systems often work to the principle of ‘maximise it – and then double it!’.
For example, a heat reservoir located on an old industrial site in Tilbury could store vast amounts of waste heat generated by the new power network. This sustainable concept isn’t just theoretical: Denmark is already capturing and using the waste heat from its electrical transformer substation at the end of the Kontek Connection – a 170 km HVDC transmission line linking Denmark and Germany. If the Danes have been so quick to embrace this clean energy opportunity, why aren’t we doing the same?
As heat reservoirs are heat source agnostic, they can also store waste heat from power stations data centres, water treatment plants, and many other commercial and industrial sites. When combined with much-needed upgrades to our electricity market – such as real-time pricing and zone-based tariffs – heat reservoirs can employ industrial heat pumps and electric boilers to convert cheap or even negatively priced renewables into significant volumes of green heat, ready for use exactly when it’s needed.
The Role of Data Centres
Data centres, essential for our digital infrastructure, consume substantial amounts of electricity, the majority of which is transformed into heat. Exceptionally useful is integrating large-scale heat reservoirs, with data centres. This enables the capture and storage of excess heat generated during peak operation times, particularly during the warmer months. This stored thermal energy can be efficiently redistributed to provide consistent heating to residential and commercial buildings in London. Effectively decoupling heat supply from demand, eliminating the need for heat generation during times of low or no renewable energy generation.
From East Anglia to London’s Urban Heat Grids
With a heat reservoir storing waste heat from the new high-voltage power lines, a long-range underground piping system, known as a ‘heat highway’, can deliver it into London. This highly economical solution can directly link East Anglia with London’s growing network of urban heat grids – also called district heating – which can supply this zero-carbon heat to homes and businesses. For example, a heat highway could run from Chelmsford to Tilbury, where it could combine with power transmission and extend along the North Bank Network into the centre of London. It’s a logical and efficient strategy to accelerate our energy transition and help convert London to carbon-free heat, street by street.
Heat highways can also ensure that the cities, towns, and rural communities across East Anglia, rather than simply being custodians to pylons and pipes, get the benefits of low-cost local heat. With the region’s ageing population feeling the chill of fuel poverty more than most, this affordable heating can alleviate the growing fears of keeping their homes warm. In the future, a heat reservoir could be sited on the outskirts of each major population centre in the region, capturing waste heat and feeding it into a local distribution network. This approach could be the first step in building a sustainable national heating system that delivers affordable, zero-carbon heat across the UK.
Did you know?
Sizewell nuclear power station alone produces an estimated 11 TWh/yr of waste heat, which is enough to heat over one million average UK homes. Across both the Cambridge and Norwich-Tilbury networks, nine major power stations (including Sizewell) generate an estimated 37 TWh/yr of wasted heat, although this figure is based on general gas power station efficiency and uptime, not specific stations. The wasted heat is split between 20 TWh/yr on the Cambridge network and 17 TWh/yr on the Norwich-Tilbury network, equating to approximately 2 million and 1.7 million homes heated, respectively. The UK currently imports gas from the global market at around 3p/kWh, a sharp decrease from its peak price of 20p/kWh. At 3p/kWh, the 37 TWh/yr of wasted heat would offset £1.1 billion annually and reduce emissions by 7.5 million tonnes of CO2. For context, the UK’s total carbon footprint in 2021 was 705 million tonnes of CO2.
Heat Reservoirs: Our Chance to Decarbonise UK Heating For Good
Labour’s clean power by 2030 goal can elevate the UK to new levels of environmental and social prosperity – but only if it includes heating. With such extraordinary investment and construction planned over the next five years, we can’t waste this golden opportunity to secure large volumes of low-cost green heat.
London can’t live on green electricity alone, but buying waste heat from East Anglia can help solve its green heat supply challenge while towns in the East of England generate revenue from clean heat exports. As a starting point, a large-scale heat reservoir in Tilford, connected to a long-range heat highway, could capture, store, and transport tremendous volumes of carbon-free heat to homes across the entire region. This infrastructure is simple, safe, and highly economical – but we need political leadership to get the wheels in motion and the pipes in the ground.
Great Britain deserves a comprehensive and future-proof energy plan that integrates sectors, eliminates waste, and tackles our heating challenges head-on. By building a national heating system that utilises waste heat capture, storage, and transmission, we can kick our natural gas addiction, slash costs and emissions, and, most importantly, put an end to fuel poverty. And while some East Anglians may still oppose the new power network, capturing its waste heat can ensure it delivers sustainable benefits across the region and helps future-proof UK heating for good.
“Pigs can fly, and Great British Energy can champion a national Clean Energy Plan that doesn’t neglect heat”
Lars Fabricius, EnergiRaven
