The £7.4m extension marks the third phase of the Leeds PIPES network and means that more buildings in new areas of the city will be able to hook up to the district heating network.
Leeds City Council has secured £3.06m of grant funding from the Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP), a government funding programme, to enable the upgrade to go ahead. This follows a an earlier award of £2.4m for an extension into the city centre.
In this phase, the network of underground pipes will grow from 26.5km to 29km.
The £49m Leeds district heating project, delivered in partnership with Vital Energi, uses heat and energy recovered from non-recyclable waste at the city’s recycling and energy recovery facility (RERF) to provide hot water to buildings in the city. Last year network it supplied 15,454 megawatt-hours of heating.
Nearby buildings and developments can choose to connect at any time and the council says that it has seen strong interest from private developers and public sector organisation across the city.
Leeds Combined Court Centre and Leeds Magistrates’ Court are the latest buildings to announce plans to connect to the scheme. The two buildings will connect as part of a wider programme of green upgrades over the next year funded by the public sector decarbonisation scheme. They will join St James’s Hospital, Leeds Beckett University and the new Leeds Trinity Academy on the Leeds PIPES network.
Councillor Helen Hayden, Leeds City Council’s executive member for infrastructure and climate, said: “The Leeds PIPES district heating network is one of our most exciting infrastructure projects and has real momentum behind it with more public, commercial, and residential buildings all choosing to connect.
“By extending the network to more parts of the city, I am delighted that we’ll soon be able to give even more businesses and residents the opportunity to enjoy affordable, reliable and low carbon heat—helping them to move away from costly fossil fuel based systems and towards a greener future.”
The PIPES acronym came from local schoolchildren. It stands for Providing Innovative Pro-Environment Solutions.
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