In this episode, Philippa talks to Anne Johnstone about why heat has been overlooked for decades, what it actually takes to move buildings off gas, and why energy security is as much about storage and infrastructure as it is about generation.
Anne Johnstone is ESG Director at Vital Energi, a company delivering low-carbon heat at scale through heat networks, large heat pumps and long-term energy infrastructure. She has spent more than two decades working across sustainability, the built environment and energy. Anne grew up in a former coal mining community in North Lanarkshire, and that experience shapes her conviction that the move to net zero must also be a just transition: one that creates opportunity rather than resentment.
In this conversation, you’ll hear about:
- Why heat accounts for almost half of the UK’s carbon emissions, and why a 50-year-old habit of burning gas through 85 percent of buildings has made it almost invisible until energy bills tripled.
- What decarbonising heat actually looks like on the ground: individual heat pumps, district heat networks pulling warmth from rivers, sewers, data centres and waste heat, and why hydrogen has no realistic role in domestic heating.
- Why heat networks have stalled in the UK despite being mature, proven technology, from regulatory blockers and the missing utility status only granted this year, to the four-to-one price gap between electricity and gas that the wholesale market still ties together.
- The Queens Quay project in Scotland, where two river source heat pumps draw enough warmth from the Clyde even at three degrees in winter to heat an entire connected community.
- Why “the pipes don’t care where the heat comes from”: once district heat infrastructure is in the ground, the heat source can be swapped and upgraded over a 60-year lifespan, which is why the priority is getting pipes in now.
- Why energy security is not the same as drilling more North Sea oil and gas: the basin is in decline, gas is sold on a global market regardless of where it is extracted, our offshore storage at Rough has been run down, and the UK is already a net importer.
- The 1.5 billion pounds paid last year in curtailment payments to wind farms told to switch off because the grid cannot move their electricity, and how thermal stores can absorb that wasted renewable energy as heat for days or weeks.
- Why a just transition matters: growing up watching the miners’ strikes hollow out her village taught Anne that promises of “new jobs will replace these” are not enough, and that skilled pathways and apprenticeships are the only honest answer.
- What Vital Energi is doing about the skills gap, with 30 apprentices in its largest intake yet and 15 percent of the workforce on a learn-and-earn pathway, plus the Powering Futures schools programme now in 125 Scottish schools.
- The one thing Anne wants every business leader setting net zero targets to understand: you cannot reach them without thinking about heat, and the closer you get to your target year, the more expensive it becomes to leave it in the too-difficult box.
Key takeaway
Anne’s argument is that the UK has spent years debating generation while ignoring the half of emissions that come from heating buildings. The technology to decarbonise heat already exists, is proven across Denmark and the Netherlands, and is delivering 70 to 80 percent emissions reductions in working UK projects. The blockers are regulatory, financial and behavioural, not technical. The risk now is not that we fail to decarbonise heat, but that we rush it, scale it badly, and create a new wave of fuel poverty in the process. The practical action for every listener is small but real: find out whether you are in a heat network zone, and start asking the questions that make local projects viable.
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The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.