Garioch District Heat

Clean Safe Affordable

Community owned for community benefit

Modern district heating in the Garioch

There is a proposal underway to develop a community-owned district heating scheme here in the Garioch. Starting with the towns of Inverurie, Port Elphinstone and Kintore, the plan is to build a modern district heating scheme that delivers hot water to homes and businesses via an underground network of pipes.

Cheaper, cleaner and safer

District heating is a top priority for the Scottish Government and is a tried and tested way of delivering clean, safe and affordable heat. The hope is that the Garioch District Heat project can deliver the heating needs of homes and businesses in a way that is cheaper, cleaner and with less risk than running gas boilers.

What is District Heat?

District Heat is a system where heating is supplied to a number of properties from a central location.

In the case of Garioch District Heat, the heat will be the surplus residual heat from the proposed Energy from Waste Plant to be built on the site of the former paper mill near Inverurie. The heat is to be ‘gifted’ to the local community by the plant developer Agile Energy Recovery (Inverurie) Ltd.

The heat will be supplied via a network of underground pipes delivering hot water to domestic, commercial and public sector properties. Each building supplied will have a heat exchanger in place of the current system-commonly a gas fired combi boiler.

Heat usage would be monitored and paid for in the same way as any other utility. The price of heat will be set by the community-owned not-for-profit company operating as Garioch District Heat.

In addition to running costs, there will be one-off initial cost to install the new system in each building. Heat exchanges tend to last much longer than combi boilers and require much less maintenance.