Pivoting the geoenergy nexuses

Mark Palmer, Andrew Frew, Nicola Barron , Joseph Ireland, Chuan Li

Research output: Book/ReportCommissioned report

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Abstract

Northern Ireland’s natural resource environment is
‘brimming with home grown’ energy opportunities
including; a diverse and thermally-rich geology, windy
undulating drumlins, and maritime zones; moreover, an
emerging array of renewable technology projects, some of
which are under consideration, in-progress or completed.
We are arguably in a time period when some of the greatest
energy changes are a foot – ‘a golden age’, so to speak.
Staying on top of, and up-to-date with, this ever-changing
energy environment is no small task. Data repositories,
reports, websites, and social media feeds all help.
Organising workshops too can serve to inform, energise,
and mobilise networks, further collective network goals,
build confidence, kick-start collaborations, and hatch as
well as spur project ideas and capital investments. This
workshop briefing note reports on all of the above.
Held on the 4th July 2023 and entitled ‘Building the
Geothermal Energy Sector in Northern Ireland,’ the
workshop was co-organised and co-hosted by Queen’s
University Belfast with the Northern Ireland Housing
Executive. It comprised multi-stakeholders, as well as
keynote speakers, panel discussions, and question
and answer sessions. Significantly, our workshop also
marked the construction completion of the new Business
School building at Riddel Hall, which, coincidently has a
geothermal heating system.

With 120 participants in attendance, our workshop aimed
to provide practitioner-led project updates across the
geoenergy nexuses. Richard Rodgers, Head of Energy and
Deputy Secretary of the Department for the Economy
opened our workshop, before keynote presentations by Dr
Matt Trewhella, Chief Executive Officer, Kensa Group, and
Sara Lynch, Head of Sustainability, Estates Directorate,
Queen’s University Belfast. The workshop activities
overall generated a range of thoughtful conversations and
discernible themes:
Theme 1 — More awareness of established geoenergy
blueprint elsewhere in the United Kingdom and further
afield. Kensa Heat Pumps Ltd demonstrated exemplary
cases of geothermal and ground source heat pump (GSHP)
applications from across the UK.
Theme 2 — Increase emphasis and overlap in both the
quality and energy trilemma issues in the energy transition.
Theme 3 — Government subvention support, political
engagement and big society conversations beyond the
important strides made with the NI Energy Strategy Action
Plan 2022, Heat Policy frameworks.
Theme 4 — Significant value co-creation and socialisation
of costs by pivoting and collaboratively working across
ecosystem nexuses. Integrated data fusion thinking
between geology, front-end heating engineering and
business models.
Theme 5 — Behavioural change among consumers will be
an important component of the level of decarbonisation
envisaged with retrofitting of homes, heat pump switching,
heat demand optimisation, and heat network development.
Theme 6 — Leapfrog pathway development with general
UK policy and the Energy Bill to close and progress the
legislation gaps between the NI Utility Regulator and Ofgem.
Also, increase the local Assembly or policy-makers’ capacity
to bring forward legislation commensurate with the other
devolved UK governments.

Overall therefore, our main conclusion from the workshop
is that sector-building efforts require the pivoting of
the geoenergy nexuses towards multiple ecosystems.
Developing the different geoenergy ecosystem perspectives
and pivoting with the 10-point axis are additional key focus
areas for sector-building and policy development.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages42
Publication statusPublished - 14 Nov 2023

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