As part of its strategy for meeting challenging carbon emissions targets, York City Council is making use of biomass boilers and solar heating panels from Hoval. Recent projects include the Green Apple Award-winning Danesgate Skills Centre, Acomb Library and York High School. The latter project will use what is believed to be UK’s largest array of solar thermal panels.

In a bid to significantly increase its energy efficiency, Flegg High School in Martham, Norfolk, built in the 1960s, has undergone some major changes over the last few years.

In 2009, the 20+ year old Broag-Remeha oil boilers in the main boiler house were replaced with a 550kW Remeha- Gilles Biomass boiler which has made a key contribution, by reducing the school’s CO2 emissions by an estimated 177 tonnes per annum and with an estimated annual financial saving of £7,000.

Lancashire based Atlantic Boilers has installed a new boiler-plant including a bio-fuel burner to heat a new workshop and laboratory at the college’s town centre campus.

The installation consists of two R22-500 dual fuel B100 bio-fuel/natural gas lead condensing boilers each rated at 530kW and one NA-R 1160kW natural gas lag high efficiency boiler. The in-house control system ensures that the two R Series boilers take up most of the heating load.

The increasing pressure on building operators to increase their energy efficiency and minimise carbon emissions necessitates a holistic evaluation of every aspect of performance, down to the finest detail. At the same time, there is a tendency to assume that sophisticated control systems will take care of all of this detail –this isn’t necessarily the case and is often missed or not recognised.

In the current economic climate, companies are looking even more closely than usual at all areas of expenditure. Building services are coming under increasing scrutiny, and heating and hot water provision is no exception. Significant savings can be achieved by replacing even 10 year old boilers with new high specification condensing or high efficiency systems, and there are several grants and loans available to businesses looking to upgrade.

There’s no doubt that in recent years sustainability and renewables have become buzzwords in the industry, with energy efficiency and green issues at the top of the political and news agenda.

While condensing technology in commercial gas-fired boilers has probably been developed as far as the laws of physics allow in terms of increased combustion efficiency, oil fired technology in the commercial sector has lagged behind - until now. This is due to the practical difficulties arising from the process of condensing flue gases from burning oil, which is highly corrosive to metal. As most traditional non-condensing oil-fired boilers have heat exchangers constructed from a metal material, guaranteed for life by some leading manufacturers, the application of conventional condensing technology would very quickly adversely affect the operating performance and life of such an appliance.

The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations (GSIUR) 1998 deal with the installation, maintenance and use of gas appliances, fittings and flues in domestic premises and certain commercial premises. However, the HSE and CORGI expressed concerns over non-compliance, following incidents in 2008, and took prompt action to inform developers and contractors, landlords and property owners of the potential dangers from certain types of flues connected to gas-fired central heating installations in some properties.

For commercial property managers, specifying heating systems is largely determined by cost - the cost of the system to purchase and install and its annual running costs. However, with more and more legislation being introduced that is intended to drastically reduce the UK's carbon emissions and the Government's long term plan to make all new non-domestic buildings carbon neutral within the next 10 years, the environmental impact of a heating system has also become increasingly important in the specification process.

The Climate Change Act has made it a legal requirement for the UK to reduce carbon emissions by 80% from the 1990 baseline by 2050. This could rise to 90% if the aviation industry fails to curb its own emissions. It's a tall order, and the most logical place to start is with the biggest consumer - buildings.

There is no question that the UK heating and ventilation sector is going to face some tough technical and engineering challenges over the next few years. Yan Evans, technical director of Andrews Water Heaters and Potterton Commercial, offers some innovative thoughts and methods on how to deliver ultra-low carbon heating and hot water solutions.