SaFEGround – Sustainable, Flexible and Efficient Ground-source heating and cooling systems

Through the 2008 Climate Change Act, the UK committed to reduce its carbon emissions by 80%. While great progress has been made so far, data suggests that reductions in emissions have been achieved through switching electricity production to greener, more environmentally friendly sources, such as offshore wind. However, there is a great need to work on further reductions in other aspects, such as the heating and cooling of buildings, which accounts for 25% of all UK final energy consumption and 15% of carbon emissions.

Project SaFEGround aims to create a template for reducing emissions from heating and cooling by deploying heat pumps. These devices efficiently extract heat from storage mediums such as air for air-source heat pumps or the ground for ground-source heat pumps. For each unit of electricity consumed, they typically generate 3-4 units of heat, making them more environmentally friendly than boilers since they require only electricity, increasingly sourced from renewable and low-carbon origins.

Therefore, SaFEGround will investigate how ground-source heat pumps can be coupled with civil engineering structures to deliver low-carbon heating and cooling in a sustainable, safe and efficient manner. To achieve this, SaFEGround will combine research on material science, heat pump technology, energy geotechnics, building energy systems modelling, whole-system modelling and finance, to demonstrate that ground source energy systems can play an important role in the UK’s future low-carbon energy mix in a cost-effective manner.