Roughly half of global final energy demand is heat, and most of it still comes from burning fossil fuels. Solar PV and heat pumps dominate the conversation. Solar thermal barely gets a mention.
Christian Albrecht, group business development director at Naked Energy, wants to change that. His argument is counterintuitive: the cleaner Britain's grid becomes, the stronger the case for solar thermal gets. Gas emits a fixed amount of carbon per kilowatt hour and always will. Grid electricity is projected towards near zero. Over a 25-year asset life, rooftop PV stops saving carbon while solar thermal carries on displacing gas.
Dominic Shales talks to Albrecht about the physics of why PV wastes most of the sunlight it receives, how Naked Energy fits 85 per cent of a roof with collectors, and how the company put the UK's largest solar thermal installation on the Grade I listed British Library. They also cover a multi-million capital problem behind industrial decarbonisation, the heat as a service model built with E.ON, the absence of UK subsidy support since the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme closed, and why solar thermal and heat pumps work better together than apart.
More at nakedenergy.com and climatesolutions.news.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Solar Thermal Technology
05:03 Understanding the Efficiency of Solar Thermal
10:10 Innovative Installation Techniques
15:06 Navigating Planning Regulations
20:04 Heat as a Service Model
25:13 Government Support and Market Dynamics
30:01 Future Plans and Investment Strategies
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