Heating, healthcare and warmer homes: the community approach to our energy future

Drones, driving and decarbonising schools: how Coventry is leading the way in energy innovation

An exciting range of sustainability schemes has been initiated by the city's strategic energy partnership with E.ON - sparking interest from other UK councils

High above the Hillfields area of Coventry, thermal camera drones have been identifying heat loss and poor insulation across thousands of homes.

A drone survey takes a few minutes compared with the hours needed for an energy efficiency home visit. This bird’s-eye view shows where heat is escaping and which buildings would benefit the most from improvements, meaning resources are targeted effectively.

Although still at the pilot stage, the thermal drone project, operated by the tech startup Kestrix, is just one example of how a pioneering 15-year “strategic energy partnership” between Coventry city council and E.ON could transform the way local energy is generated, consumed and managed.

“Local authorities don’t have the power or the levers to make all the changes that will [have an] impact on climate change,” says Jim O’Boyle (below, left), cabinet member for jobs, regeneration and climate change at Coventry city council. “It requires everybody – the public sector, the private sector, the third sector, residents, businesses – to come together and say: ‘We need to do something here.’”

This kind of collaboration is essential if Coventry is to achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. In fact, reaching net zero against a backdrop of inefficient housing stock, skills shortages and financial constraints is a huge challenge for every city. “We see an opportunity to help the council across all of those problems,” says Natalie Robinson (below, right), head of new city partnerships at E.ON.

The company has deep links with Coventry, home to its UK headquarters for more than 30 years. “We have a heritage, a legacy in the city … but as a global company we obviously have huge experience in other cities, in other regions, that we can harness and deliver at a really local level,” says Robinson.

Taking action
O’Boyle and Robinson both stress that the strategic energy partnership is focused on action, not just talk. “We’re going to learn a lot as we go,’” says Robinson.

In the first year of the partnership, established in 2023, new electric vehicle chargers were installed across the city centre, with hundreds more planned in coming years. In fact, Coventry has more EV chargers than any city outside London – almost 500 charging points per 100,000 people. By the end of 2025, it is also set to be the UK’s first all-electric bus city.

Meanwhile, low-income families have warmer, cheaper-to-heat homes thanks to energy efficiency measures installed under the government’s Home Upgrade Grant scheme. As 20% of Coventry households are classed as low-income, compared with 13% nationally, providing access to such schemes and informing people of the benefits has been another key part of the partnership.

E.ON is also piloting free battery installations in homes to help vulnerable customers make the most of time-of-use tariffs, which provide cheaper electricity when supply outstrips demand. Robinson says this pioneering scheme is a step away from the usual short-term approach and will provide a long-term benefit for those who “typically can’t afford these solutions” by giving them the capability to store lower priced energy for use at peak times.

Other E.ON projects under way include green energy upgrades for four of the city’s community buildings and, over time, a more detailed programme to decarbonise school estates.

Seeing the benefits
Along with supporting the city’s decarbonisation efforts, many of the projects planned by the partnership are designed to create more green jobs and regenerate the local economy. “Decarbonisation comes with massive opportunities,” says O’Boyle, “particularly around economic growth.”

Over the next few years, E.ON aims to recruit and train at least 25 apprentices, with five local residents from underrepresented communities already recruited in the first year of the partnership. Additionally, the company will be offering work placements to young people from across the community to help them develop employable skills and experience.

A programme offering sustainability and renewable energy workshops has been introduced in local schools. “Inspiring that future generation and showing them the pathways into the energy industry starts at a really young age,” says Robinson.

Coventry Building Society Arena, a venue for business, sport and live events, recently entered into a sustainability partnership with E.ON that will drive the arena’s continued decarbonisation. Further collaborations with local businesses should ensure that Coventry’s wealth of automotive, industrial and creative talent plays a major role in the city’s decarbonisation efforts over the next decade.

“Britain was the birthplace of the industrial revolution. It should be the birthplace of the green industrial revolution,” says O’Boyle. “We’ve got all the skills, all the opportunities, all the businesses, all the people. We just need to make it happen.”

E.ON hopes the strategic energy partnership will act as a blueprint for how cities can transition to net zero emissions, while also providing economic and social benefits for residents. “We are already seeing interest from other cities in what we’re doing,” says Robinson.

Find out more about E.ON’s pioneering work to create a more sustainable world

Feeling the heat: the futuristic energy network keeping city homes cosy

At the Royal Docks development in east London, homes and businesses will be warmed and cooled by E.ON's pioneering technology that is designed to repurpose surplus heat from local factories

Once London’s gateway to world trade, the Royal Docks – an area stretching 2.5 miles along the Thames east of Canary Wharf – has a proud history of innovation. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, its cutting edge features included refrigerated warehousing, electric lighting and railway lines that ran right to the dock edge. A century later, it is once again leading the way as it becomes one of the UK’s most exciting regeneration stories.

The east London neighbourhood of Silvertown is being transformed into the vibrant new heart of the Royal Docks. The project involves the restoration of the iconic Millennium Mills (a derelict flour mill) and the construction of about 6,500 homes plus workspaces, shops, restaurants, bars and a water sports centre – creating a new visitor destination for London. And, in a first for the UK, homes and businesses will be powered by a pioneering heating and cooling solution developed by E.ON.

Based on heat pump technology, ectogrid is a low-carbon energy sharing network designed for city districts. It was inspired by ectotherms – cold-blooded animals such as snakes and lizards, which regulate their body temperature using external sources.

The energy grid provides heating and cooling to homes and businesses by first tapping energy sources available locally, from air, water or the ground. Each property connected to the system then sends its excess heating or cooling to other buildings as needed, maximising use. Other sources of energy are drawn on only when all available energy from the low-carbon network has been harnessed.

E.ON estimates that by using ectogrid at Silvertown in place of traditional gas boilers, emissions will be 88% lower, saving about 4,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. The innovative technology won a Cop28 Energy Transition Changemakers award for energy efficiency.

“There are quite a few sites in this part of London that generate significant levels of excess heat – sewerage works, big factories and data centres,” says Daniel Bridge (below, left), a programme director with the Royal Docks Team, an initiative between the mayor of London and the mayor of Newham, which is overseeing the redevelopment. With all that spare heat going begging, the E.ON team has installed the infrastructure to capture and use it, reducing the need for alternative forms of heating. Right from the start, homes will be connected to the ectogrid – and the first properties are expected to be finished within months.

The Royal Docks, where E.ON is working in collaboration with the international real estate group Lendlease, is once again pointing the way to the future. “This is the way that many energy experts think we should be heating and cooling cities moving forward,” says Bridge. As well as being more sustainable than traditional heating, Bridge says that ectogrid “has the potential to create cost savings over time because using excess heat is cheaper than generating new heat”.

Tony Poole (right), head of business development for heat networks at E.ON UK, says Silvertown will have a host of other benefits. He believes it will inspire green job creation, contribute to energy security, reduce levels of fuel poverty, help to improve air quality, and be a catalyst for economic development. “Making energy more affordable and sustainable is a critical element of growing the UK economy – and it cannot be achieved without an ambition to deliver huge societal benefit too,” he says.

While it’s a first for the UK, the technology is already being used in sustainable projects across Europe, such as the Milan Innovation District, in Italy, or Medicon Village in Lund, southern Sweden.

Bridge says that the use of ectogrid at Silvertown is an inspiring example. “This is a really significant move forward for the UK because at the moment I don’t think there’s another project on this scale which shares residual energy between buildings to heat and cool 6,500 homes, through this amazing new technology that E.ON has developed,” he says.

“Having projects that you can point to is important because when something’s very new and innovative everything is trickier because it’s an unknown,” he adds. “We want the Royal Docks to be a test-bed, we’ve set up the right kind of public-private partnership between E.ON, Lendlease and ourselves to enable these kinds of innovations to be scaled.”

Find out more about E.ON’s pioneering work to create a more sustainable world

Healing people and the planet: everyone wins when the NHS cuts its carbon footprint

The NHS is embracing sustainable energy solutions, whether to reduce cost pressures and meet carbon targets, or to improve the homes – and health – of its patients

At the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) in Nottingham, the last of 12,000 new double-glazed windows has just been installed. This is only stage one of an energy efficiency project that aims to reduce running costs and get the hospital to net zero by 2040, but it’s already delivering benefits. “Previously the hospital was draughty and noisy as parts of the site back on to the busy A52,” says Mike Soroka, QMC’s head of estates. “These windows have made it warmer in winter and cooler in summer. And that will benefit our patients.”

Energy efficiency and good health have an interesting circularity. The air pollution that contributes to climate change has also been linked to conditions such as heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and the worsening of asthma. And while the NHS treats patients with those conditions, it’s also a high emitter of CO2 – in England it’s responsible for about 4% of the total carbon footprint. Ageing buildings and cost pressures have added to the challenge.

To tackle this, the government has set a legally binding target for the NHS in England to reach net zero by 2040 for its direct carbon emissions.

E.ON is among the partners working with QMC to boost the hospital’s energy efficiency by installing a range of energy saving technologies. As well as replacing windows, the 15-year partnership will see E.ON build and operate a £15m energy centre to provide a more environmentally friendly source of heating and cooling for the hospital. The new energy centre replaces natural gas heating and cooling with high-efficiency heat pumps that extract heat from the air and from the ground using boreholes up to 250 metres deep. The new heating and cooling system is expected to cut CO2 emissions by 10,000 tonnes a year – the equivalent of taking more than 2,200 cars off the road – while reducing running costs and making the hospital a more comfortable place for patients and staff.

“We needed somebody with design expertise to help us as part of the process,” Soroka says about working with E.ON. “There’s been lots of collaboration with our clinical colleagues of course, but E.ON has helped us improve what we’re trying to achieve. They’ve had a lot of input.”

There’s been growing awareness, more broadly, of the link between people’s health and their ability to keep warm. Fuel poverty affects an estimated one in seven households in England and Wales, and accounts for an estimated 10,000 deaths a year. Living in a cold home doesn’t just affect someone’s physical health – making chronic conditions such as arthritis and asthma worse – but their mental health too. Citizens Advice estimates that carrying out a major retrofit of the millions of poorly insulated homes around the country to make them warmer would have “a profound impact” on health standards and save the NHS £2bn over the next five years.

Glen Burley (pictured right), CEO of the Foundation Group, which encompasses four NHS trusts in the West Midlands, says its healthcare employees are finding this a growing issue. “A lot of our community staff see this because they’re visiting people in their homes. We’ve been keen to push [fuel poverty] as one of the issues around the wider determinants of health. The majority of our admissions are older people admitted as emergencies. When you look at the root causes, it’s often people not being warm enough, not being fed, not being able to manage their general wellbeing, which leads to a health-related issue.”

There have been a number of interventions to tackle this problem. Energy companies, through government-mandated schemes such as the Energy Company Obligation, have delivered more than 2m improvements to homes over the past decade.

One particular project was the Homes for Living initiative, a pioneering effort over three years to enhance the lives of more than 2,000 older people by installing aids and home adaptations.

The programme focused on improving independence, wellbeing, and mobility and was an extension of E.ON’s existing offer of free or partially funded home solutions such as insulation, solar panels and air source heat pumps, and built on its existing energy efficiency schemes.

Working with Newcastle University, E.ON undertook research that showed significant improvements in both physical and mental health, with 50% of participants reporting a reduction in feelings of loneliness. Additionally, 14% of those who were previously dependent on others regained full independence. E.ON estimates that there could be savings of £1.7bn from health and social care budgets if the programme was scaled further across England.

Burley says this is work that needs buy-in across the public sector: “Making it one of our big priorities [within healthcare trusts] has really got people focused on it. There are hundreds of priorities in the NHS, so you do need to signal this is really important, and you’re going to put effort into it. In addition to it being a good thing to do, and an efficient thing financially, the public health benefits of reducing demand upon health providers are significant.”

At QMC, Soroka says that, alongside securing the necessary funding for its decarbonisation projects, the biggest challenge has been keeping the hospital running at the same time. “It’s a very busy site. We had to make more than 100 car parking spaces unavailable for weeks to drill 64 boreholes for the heat pumps, which was tough for our staff and our patients. We also created a whole empty ward so we could move beds around while we replaced the windows.”

For other NHS leaders embarking on their net zero journey, Soroka recommends getting buy-in from the various trust stakeholders at the start. “It’s not the estates team delivering this, it’s everyone. A lot of effort comes from the clinical teams that have to move wards and look after patients. Above all, you have to remember why you’re there – it’s not a construction site, it’s a hospital.”

Find out more about E.ON’s pioneering work to create a more sustainable world.

Learning from Scandi innovation: how Sweden’s ‘city of tomorrow’ is leading the way in climate-smart urban development

The district of Hyllie on the outskirts of Malmö is a futuristic energy-efficient location that's powered in partnership with the energy provider E.ON

When most of us think of Sweden our first thoughts are probably of Abba, flatpack furniture, or possibly even meatballs. However, for those with a special interest in sustainable energy, their thoughts may well turn to Hyllie – a district on the outskirts of Malmö, which is a testbed of innovation in climate-smart urban development. But how did Hyllie become a driving force in energy efficiency, and what can it teach the rest of the world about the future of sustainable living?

As one of Sweden’s largest cities, you might assume that Malmö has long been a bustling hive of creativity, but that couldn’t be further from the case. Until relatively recently, the city had a reputation for being a post-industrial backwater – but all that changed in 2000, sparked in part by the opening of the Öresund bridge. It connects Sweden with Denmark, and helped power an economic transformation in Malmö by improving links to the rest of Europe. Now, 25 years later, the city is at the forefront of sustainable living, with Hyllie the jewel in its crown.

Just a six minute journey from Malmö’s central train station, Hyllie is built on a greenfield site. Work to create a new residential and commercial development there began in 2010, and the aim is that it will be home to 25,000 residents by 2040.

The fact Hyllie has become something of a blueprint for smart cities of the future is no accident, but by design. “The city of Malmö approached E.ON in the early stages of city development and started the dialogue: could we utilise Hyllie as a testbed? How can we enable energy in a sustainable way and what kind of sustainable technology do we need in order to do so?” says Peder Berne (below), from E.ON’s sustainable cities team. What emerged was an innovative public-private partnership between the city of Malmö, E.ON and VA SYD, the publicly owned water and sewerage company. Together, they have created something special.

E.ON recognises there is no single solution to a country’s energy problems, and this multi-layered approach is visible in Hyllie. The district’s heating and cooling is completely powered by renewable and recycled (sometimes known as “recovered”) energy, which comes from a number of sources: solar; wind; biogas, from food waste or sewage; incinerated refuse; and the capture of excess heat from industrial processes. However, powering a city on renewable and recycled energy comes with its own set of challenges.

“We can’t really [control] when the wind’s blowing or when the sun is shining, or when the heating or cooling demand is high,” says Berne. “And then it becomes much more relevant to ask, how can we store energy, and also how can we find flexibility within the infrastructure that we are developing to cope with these variations?”

This is where the idea started to form of a digital brain called ectocloud that optimises the different thermal energy flows, and enables an integrated energy infrastructure that can harness, store and redistribute energy throughout the local networks. This also fostered the development of E.ON’s innovative heating and cooling system, ectogrid.

From data centres and transport hubs to supermarkets, many cities already produce energy in the form of excess heat. One of the most exciting aspects of the E.ON ectogrid, winner of an energy efficiency award at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, is that it uses heat pumps to harness this energy which usually goes untapped, and is therefore wasted. In Hyllie and Malmö, ectocloud ensures that the best available energy is redirected to buildings across the smart district heating grid when and where needed, providing them with their heating.

One of the great advantages with the Hyllie development is the fact that E.ON was able to be on board from the ground up, building, testing and evaluating as sustainable systems were put into the very heart of the district. Although that won’t be possible in every case, E.ON is ready to take the lessons learned and implement these systems elsewhere. Excitingly, many features of such smart and integrated energy infrastructure are now being scaled throughout the rest of Malmö, with the whole city aiming to be run on 100% renewable and recycled energy by 2030. And in the UK, E.ON is currently installing the nation’s first ectogrid in Silvertown, a major redevelopment project on east London’s Royal Docks.

As for why Hyllie emerged as a testbed for sustainable innovation, Berne has some thoughts. “From a Scandinavian or a Swedish perspective, I think sustainability has been quite high up on our agenda, and Malmö is a frontrunner in sustainable urban development, recognising the value of driving transition through collaborative testbeds providing proof of concept in real-life environments,” he says.

“Perhaps that is because we have a lot of nature nearby, so we see the value of it. In this modern stressful life, it’s a place where the mind can get a bit of peace.” With the help of E.ON, this sustainable outlook could soon be one of Sweden’s most famous exports.

Find out more about E.ON’s pioneering work in the UK to create sustainable cities and communities