ADE: National Wealth Fund Must Go Further to Stop Energy Waste and Back British Jobs

The Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE) has called on the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to deliver on heat networks, warning that it must not repeat the mistakes predecessor, the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) who squandered years of potential progress with zero investment in actual heat network projects. With the UK wasting enough heat annually to warm nearly every home in the country, the ADE is calling on the fund to finally channel capital into shovel-ready heat network infrastructure. 

The Fund has taken on a new “strategic steer” this week, pledging to back clean energy and “take greater risk” - but only where returns are guaranteed. 

ADE CEO Caroline Bragg said: “Heat networks have been a ‘strategic priority’ for years, but under the UKIB, that meant a £22 billion war chest gathering dust. Actual projects built; zero. Actual households connected; zero. Now the National Wealth Fund is recycling the same vague rhetoric, ring-fencing the same pet technologies and ignoring the same urgent opportunities. We can’t afford another decade of warm words and cold pipes.” 

The ADE warns that vague priorities and a reluctance to back proven heat network technologies could squander opportunities to harness the UK’s wasted heat - enough to warm most of the nation’s buildings. Heat networks alone could unlock £100 billion in private investment by 2050. 

Heat networks - systems that capture waste heat from industry, power plants and data centres to warm homes and businesses - have languished as a “strategic priority” since the inception of UKIB (now the National Wealth Fund). Despite being critical to cutting bills, boosting energy security and decarbonising heating, the UKIB allocated nothing to physical projects. Instead, its £1.8 billion legacy comprises financial advisories and feasibility studies - a pattern the National Wealth Fund now risks repeating.