National Heat Map

Web-based tool to support low-carbon energy projects.

Project duration: January 2010 to April 2018

The National Heat Map was commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change – now the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). It was created and managed by CSE from 2010 to 2018.

Its purpose was to support the planning and deployment of local low-carbon energy projects in England by providing publicly accessible high-resolution web-based maps of heat demand by area.

The uniqueness of the National Heat Map lay in its detailed address-level modelling of demand data and the tools for analysing this. It combined a very detailed geographic model of energy use with a range of user-friendly visualisation and reporting tools, providing sophisticated GIS functionality to non-technical users via a standard web browser.

Example images from the National Heat Map

In April 2018 the National Heat Map was decommissioned by BEIS and is no longer working. It means we can’t show you how it functioned. But you’ll get some idea from looking at the images and reading the description below.

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The heat map was primarily intended to help identify neighbourhoods where heat distribution is most likely to be beneficial and economically viable. In other words, it was a tool for prioritising locations for more detailed investigation – not one for designing heat networks directly or for querying energy bills.

With the exception of public buildings, the heat map was produced entirely without access to the meter readings or energy bills of individual premises, which meant that once a promising location was identified, it was necessary to obtain directly metered data for the homes and businesses with it.

And again with the exception of public buildings, the maps were based on data that has been modelled down to an individual address level without containing anything that constitutes personal data. This allowed for the ‘upward’ aggregation of results without losing accuracy, whilst preserving the ability to drill down to finer scales at chosen locations.

At high map-zoom levels you can identify individual buildings and groups of buildings which could benefit from heat distribution installations, taking account of the relative accuracy of modelled data.

How the National Heat Map was made

The National Heat Map was built from a bottom-up address-level model of heat demand in England. The model estimates the total heat demand of every address in England, but based on published sub-national energy consumption statistics and without making use of metered energy readings.

Heat demand density web maps were produced from this model, covering Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and Public Buildings (DECs) and Total heat demand.

In addition point locations for combined heat and power plants and power stations were mapped, along with local authority and regional boundaries.

For both residential and non-residential models, heat demand was first estimated at address level using a range of data sources. These estimates were then used in a weighted disaggregation of known small-area average heating fuel consumption. The inputs to the heat demand model are summarised in the following tables.

Table 1 | Non-Residential Model

 Table 2 | Residential Model

Table 3 | Other map layers

These are the licenses under which the National Heat Map data was used:

• Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012
• Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2012
• National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2012
• © Local Government Information House Limited copyright and database rights 2012 100049123
• © Hawlfraint a hawliau cronfa ddata cyfyngedig Ty Gwybodaeth ar Lywodraeth Leol 2012 100049123