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Episode 25 – Part 3 – What does the future of the built environment look like with Nic Cory, Absolar
38 Plays1 year ago
In part 3 of this week’s episode, we speak with Nic Cory from Absolar about what the future of the built environment looks like.
Across the three parts of this episode, we are discussing how AI is changing how properties can be surveyed and the role of solar and heat pumps in the future of the built environment.
Nic is an entrepreneurial Finance Director with a diverse background in Big 4 audit, deals, private equity and property fund management. His journey has led him to Absolar, where they are using technology and data to drive Net Zero opportunities and decarbonise property portfolios whilst ensuring financial returns for clients.
Absolar exists to help people and businesses reduce their energy costs whilst adopting renewable energy sources. Using unique AI-based remote sensing and GIS technology, Absolar can carry out remote solar surveys for any building, portfolio, and city, wherever you are in the UK.
In Part 3 of this episode, we discuss:
🔋 Advancements in heat pumps and batteries
💽 The need for a national database to track installations
📊 The challenge of convincing property developers to view decarbonisation as an investment rather than a cost
📗 Creating awareness of the benefits of decarbonisation and energy efficiency
👷♂️ Free survey from Absolar for commercial properties through their partnership with NatWest.
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Transcript
Future of Built Environment: Solar Heat Pumps
00:00:00
Speaker
So for this final part of this episode with Nick from Apsolar, we're looking at what does the future of the built environment look like, specifically around solar heat pumps and so on. My first question on this then is, how quick do you think properties or areas can be identified that are suitable for or have the biggest impact perhaps for solar and so on? Yeah, of course. If I sort of tackle heat pumps to begin with, it's quite an unknown because
00:00:29
Speaker
Whilst we can look externally at properties and look at heat pumps, very much relies on the internal construction of the property, what the heating system is, how well insulated that property is. And really, a heat pump needs to be done in line with a deep retrofit. And that comes to the limitation of AIs that we discussed in part one.
00:00:48
Speaker
you actually need a surveyor to go in and look at that property to assess whether that heat pump is going to have those
Feasibility and Impact of Solar PV in the UK
00:00:54
Speaker
results. So very hard to quantify the ability for air source heat pumps to help us decarbonize and the impact it will have.
00:01:03
Speaker
PV is slightly easier to sort of start to quantify that impact. We did a study two months ago looking at the top 1000 buildings within the country. What are the biggest buildings that should have solar PV on their roof and what impact would that have?
00:01:18
Speaker
on the electricity system of the UK. Actually, those 1,000 buildings could fit 1,400 megawatts of solar PV, produces 1.2 million megawatt hours. Sounds big numbers, but actually it's less than half a percent of what the UK needs to draw each year in terms of electricity.
00:01:40
Speaker
Even if you tackle the big top percentile, it's not going to have a significantly material impact on our system. And that's why it really does need to be that disaggregated approach of sort of throughout the property market, decarbonizing, having the impact. It needs to be done at source.
Current State of Solar PV in UK Homes
00:02:01
Speaker
I also touched on the grid limitation that actually if you covered those 1000 properties, you can't move that power from one part of the country to the other without significant grid investment. So it's not a problem that you can sort of leave to other people. If you're in a commercial property and you need to decarbonize your supply, you need to start thinking about your rooftop.
00:02:22
Speaker
interesting actually there's quite a few challenges in there to coordinate actually come together I suppose on that note then if it's if it's something that we need to do as overall as a country what percentage of properties to switch do you know that of those figures
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, so we carried out the study of looking at all UK residential property, came out with 4% currently have solar PV, and actually that stacks up with the MCS records that they have, that it's 4% of residential property has PV installed at a tiny percentage compared to the 67% that actually are suitable for install.
00:03:03
Speaker
You asked me the same question on commercial. I can't give you an answer, and it's bizarre that I can't give you an answer, but it's not recorded. As a government, as a country, we don't have that central register of commercial PV installs. There's been sort of attempts at it, but each kind of attempt is sort of lacking some elements that allow us to land on a number.
00:03:25
Speaker
And that's a study we intend to do, probably looking out, it's going to take us probably a year to start covering the country looking for existing solar.
AI and Data Collection for Solar Installations
00:03:33
Speaker
We want to start to quantify how much PV is on commercial roofs and where that is within the country. And is that something that an AI model would help with, for example? So you take a Google Maps scan, for example, and it can potentially pick up what may or may not have an installation, or is it a more manual process at the moment?
00:03:53
Speaker
That's it, it's the AI model, so we need to run it across every property, and that just takes a lot of power to start running that across the country, as well as the various license fees we have to pay people for using their imagery and data, and that's why it'll just take a bit of a while. What we're looking to do is actually understand what age are the panels on that rooftop, how big are they, so we can start to look at how much power is that building, and therefore, is the population able to provide into the system.
00:04:21
Speaker
That's interesting. Do you think, longer term, we need, I suppose, a database where we record this type of information? So we know age and capacity and so on. Will that come with grid changes or is that something you think is going to be very difficult to put together?
00:04:38
Speaker
Certainly, and if we had that kind of national grid structure that we used to have, then clearly they would know through that permissions process. The fact it's been devolved to various DNOs means actually we're lacking that information. We've got very good visibility on small-scale systems just because of the MCS, very good regulation for small-scale generation, has very good record-keeping, is able to give us a good kind of precise number of installs. Above that is where we're lacking the information.
00:05:08
Speaker
And they're the material ones.
Integration of Solar in New Buildings
00:05:10
Speaker
They're the ones that have an impact on the grid. So we do need to know. Awesome. Okay. So I think my final question for our episode, and I do have a tendency to say final and something pops into my head, but my final one is.
00:05:24
Speaker
When we're building new properties, you touched on earlier the fact that one of the challenges with installing PV, particularly in commercial buildings, is having a plant on top of the roofs and it not having been obviously thought out beforehand. So are there changes in the way we need to build?
00:05:40
Speaker
commercial and resi buildings, thinking through things like the biodiversity aspects, the architectural elements of where we position things to allow solar and heat pumps to be more effective. Or do you think there are going to be legislatory changes around that? Or I don't know, it's a slightly open question, I think.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think where we see with new buildings, I mean biodiversity is clearly important and I think there is legislation that's going to come through and impact that. Perhaps necessary because there isn't a direct financial gain from that and therefore you've got to kind of actually make sure people do get on that route.
00:06:21
Speaker
Again, think concentrating on solar PV, developers and portfolio operators still can't quite get to grips with the lifecycle cost of the building. It is still looking at sort of annual maintenance budgets or the development costs as opposed to realising, generating your own energy and potentially selling that energy to a tenant is a way of sort of de-risking that property, getting a guaranteed income,
00:06:49
Speaker
We've got clients where we've put PV on their roof. Now, if that property is void, they're still going to be making 40,000, 50,000 pounds a year, selling that energy back to the grid. It gives them a bit of security. That lifecycle costing of actually saying, yes, but from year three, year four, that system is going to be saving money, therefore earning money.
00:07:11
Speaker
still hasn't entered into the majority of developers' mindsets. We still have increasingly frustrating conversations where it is very much viewed as a cost as opposed to an opportunity.
Financial Perception of Solar Installations
00:07:24
Speaker
Why do you think that might be out of interest? Is it because who they are selling or leasing a building onto only sees the cost aspect themselves and they don't necessarily account for the future payback or is there something else that might be driving that? I come back to what I said at the very beginning, I'm an accountant by trade and it's my profession that actually is hampering a lot of this. We have to work with portfolios quite hard
00:07:52
Speaker
to try and convince the board that actually it is an investment and not a cost and it's viewing it as an investment that has a return rather than viewing any kind of decarbonisation as maintenance. There is still the idea that it's part of the long-term maintenance plan of a property as opposed to actually we're investing in the property and making those improvements.
00:08:17
Speaker
you kind of touched on tenancies and occupancies. There is also a reluctance with landlords to change a building mid-tenancy or to start to discuss selling energy to the tenant because clearly when you start opening a negotiation with a tenant then negotiation starts, rent reviews come in and so a lot of this is sort of kicked into the long grass in terms of well when that tenancy changes over we'll consider
Apsolar's Partnerships and Contact Information
00:08:43
Speaker
it.
00:08:43
Speaker
So I think landlords are starting to get wise to it, but those lease lengths drive a lot of that reluctance. Fascinating. Thank you very much for coming on today. There's been a lot of very interesting areas we've discussed and looking at the intricacies of how they fit together. If anyone wants to get in touch with you around what you're doing and to learn more about how they get in touch.
00:09:09
Speaker
Certainly take a look at our website, absolla, A-B-E-S-O-L-A-R.co.uk. There you'll see a kind of selection of case studies, the types of public and private clients that we've assessed. And we are currently running a partnership with NatWest. Any commercial property can go to NatWest site and request a service survey for free and see what they can do. Awesome. Thank you again for coming out. Thank you.