A seaside town’s council has launched a project to roll out a heat network that will offer climate-friendly heating to all its homes and buildings by 2050. The scheme in Worthing, West Sussex, will see up to £500 million of investment by heat network investor, developer and operator Hemiko, the company said. Worthing Borough Council identified a heat network as the cheapest and most efficient way to decarbonise the town’s buildings, and brought Hemiko in to fund, deliver and operate the project. Heat networks use a centralised source of heat – anything from a large heat pump drawing energy from water or air to waste heat from a data centre – and pipe it to nearby buildings where it is used to heat rooms and water. Heat networks remove the need for individual heat pumps, boilers or hot water tanks in properties, providing heating and hot water from the piped heat through a heat exchanger which for a home is around the same size as a small gas boiler and can be individually controlled. It is expected up to a fifth of homes could be heated through heat networks by 2050, as the country shifts away from polluting gas boilers...