Kensa join the TEDx Debate
Climate Change & Fuel Poverty: Engineering a Solution with Ground Source Heat Pumps.
Kensa Contracting’s recently appointed Director of Business Development, Karl Drage, has joined the global Ted community with a recent presentation at Leamington Spa College. The TEDx talk’s aim was to encourage more consumers to adopt ground source heat pumps, and influence government policy to deliver a future of sustainable, low carbon heating infrastructure in place of fossil fuels.
During his talk, Karl delivered hard-hitting truths about the current climate crisis and the stark effects of fuel poverty before offering a viable and tangible solution to these issues in the form of heat pumps.
Karl says:
“The way in which we heat our homes is currently at the very heart of the climate crisis and this has got to change. Heat is the single biggest factor in UK domestic energy consumption, contributing one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and is the single biggest cause of air pollution and climate gases.”
The talk outlined sobering statistics: 11% of households in England and Wales and 35% in Scotland are currently fuel poor (equating to 3,751,000 people), 50,000 of whom will die this winter in the UK because they are simply not able to heat their homes. Furthermore, the cost to the NHS from problems with cold homes is over £1.3 billion pounds. That cost doesn’t take into account the reduced quality of life of people and communities living in cold, damp and rotting homes.
“These statistics are pretty hard to swallow,” continues Karl, “given that the technologies exist right now to solve the climate change problem, eliminate early winter deaths and cure fuel poverty.”
“We are experiencing a disruptive change in the heating industry. Just like we have seen Uber change the way we hire Taxis, over the next few years Heat Pumps will completely change the way we heat our homes.”
Kensa has pioneered the adoption of ground source heat pumps with ambient temperature shared ground loop arrays, with the aim of delivering substantial carbon emission reductions and running cost savings utilising the most efficient renewable heat technology.
Karl concluded his talk by calling on homeowners to drive the demand for heat pumps and renewables to tackle the issues of climate change and fuel poverty head-on. Karl also explored the possible shape of a post-Renewable Heat Incentive funding package to enable the wide-scale adoption of renewables, in the form of ‘Heat as a Service’, which in years to come will enable consumer adoption of this low carbon, low cost technology without the upfront cost.
Kensa is privileged to join TED, a global community who are driven to share the inspirational ideas of others covering vastly diverse topics in over 100 languages making them accessible to everybody.
