Hunt starts for Square Mile £4bn heat network developer

New modelling exhibits the system may finally provide warmth to round 1,200 buildings and rely closely on the River Thames for strategic warmth provide.

The 42-year concession will see a single non-public companion create and run a Particular Function Automobile to take the community by design and improvement to development and operation.

Beneath the plan, the Metropolis will take no financial return however will maintain a “golden share” within the SPV to safeguard governance and key strategic selections.

Contract signing is focused for November 2026 following a five-stage aggressive process.

Current research recognized round 1,200 buildings that may very well be mandated to attach below rising heat-network laws.

Their mixed annual warmth demand of roughly 1,000 GWh would require an estimated £1.26bn of heat-network CAPEX to serve – a part of a wider system worth now anticipated to exceed £4bn over the lifetime of the concession.

Strategic research underline that the Thames will play a pivotal function in supplying and transporting warmth into the Metropolis.

In addition to performing as a direct warmth supply for big water-source heat-pump installations, the river hall affords a route for large strategic warmth mains operating west–east alongside the waterfront.

Proposed long-term Cory Warmth Primary Venture for central London

Indicative route of strategic warmth foremost for each trunk (inexperienced line) and branches (blue line)

Quick-term choices additionally embrace thermal barges moored on the river, with Swan Lane pier rising as the popular early location for a floating set up. Different mooring factors have been mapped and may very well be activated as demand grows or provide is phased in.

Long run, the Metropolis is predicted to rely closely on three industrial-scale sources: waste warmth from Tower Hamlets information centres; rejected warmth from Thames Water’s Beckton Sewage Remedy Works, which sheds round 1,029 GWh a 12 months; and an enormous provide from Cory’s Riverside Vitality Park in Belvedere.

Riverside’s present 917 GWh annual warmth output is ready to leap to about 3,000 GWh as soon as the brand new Riverside 2 plant completes.

Cory’s enlargement plans had been boosted in August when its Warmth Primary 1 scheme – a strategic cross-London pipe linking the Riverside website to central networks – was designated a Nationally Vital Infrastructure Venture, transferring it into the Growth Consent Order regime for accelerated planning.

Taken collectively, warmth from Riverside 1 and a pair of may meet all the heating load of the Sq. Mile and even provide half of Westminster’s annual demand.

Cory already handles the Metropolis’s residual waste through barge from Walbrook Wharf, offering a long-standing operational hyperlink feeding into the brand new heat-network imaginative and prescient.

The Metropolis’s procurement timetable units an purposes deadline of 26 January, interim tenders in March, ultimate tenders in June and a most well-liked bidder announcement on 5 November 2026. Arup is advising on procurement.