CASE STUDIES
Market opportunities for Scottish direct electric heat manufacturing

Client: Scottish Enterprise

THE CHALLENGE

Scottish Enterprise commissioned CLT to conduct an evaluation of Scotland’s direct electric heat market up to 2030, including infrared, storage heaters, electric radiators, underfloor heating, electric boilers, and their associated control systems. Scottish Enterprise sought an understanding of the sector, including the current market players, and the economic opportunities and barriers of direct electric technologies in achieving Net Zero buildings heat by 2045 (per the Heat in Buildings strategy), as well as recommendations for relevant stakeholders and businesses to utilise these opportunities.

THE OUTCOME

CLT delivered a 58-slide report to Scottish Enterprise outlining the current market, opportunities, barriers, and recommendations to better understand and utilise direct electric heat as an important pillar of achieving net zero buildings heat in Scotland. The report has been published, and can be found here

 

While heat pumps are slated to be a dominant force in achieving net zero heat, direct electric heating systems pose a significant economic opportunity for Scotland. In this report, CLT assessed the nine current manufacturers’ capabilities, market statistics, opportunities, growth drivers and growth barriers to create a series of recommendations for relevant stakeholders and direct-electric businesses to take advantage of the market. In the end, it was found that there are severe gaps in holistic understanding of the direct electric heat market in Scotland, and that their positioning as a genuine economic opportunity for net zero is not defined. This is problematic due to the known carbon benefits of electric heating (e.g., flexible grid use of storage heaters), and through the Scottish grid’s progress in  already-established domestic market base of over 160,000 homes on electric storage heating, and significant economic opportunities for electric heating (esp. zone-heating) for industrial and commercial sites. CLT closed the report by recommending a series of actions to connect the disparate direct electric heat manufacturers in Scotland to support education initiatives for public installers and the public, and further recommended the Scottish government to explore the consequences of the proposed shutdown of the storage heating systems’ radio/tele metering facility in March 2024, as storage heaters have significant carbon-savings due to their ability to utilise the grid flexibly.