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Bristol City Council built district heating in Redcliffe, Old Market, Bedminster and Temple
Permanent project revision
Revision 2026-08-25-bristol-baseline · effective 2026-08-25
Current revision. This is the snapshot used by the live entity page.
Created the first structured Evidence Passport with 21 claims and 12 source dossiers.
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add /evidencePassport — Added claim-level evidence mapping and source dossiers.add /revisionHistory — Established a permanent, hash-addressed baseline revision.The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
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Bristol City Council built district heating in Redcliffe, Old Market, Bedminster and Temple
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completing the original Redcliffe network in 2016
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placed the assets in a company incorporated in October 2018 as Energy Service Bristol Limited
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Its energy centres include a 3MW water source heat pump at Castle Park that draws heat from Bristol's Floating Harbour
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the company passed to Vattenfall Heat UK on 4 January 2023
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under the Bristol City Leap partnership
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the reported buyer for the next sale is the London private equity firm Reinova Capital
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the council consented to the change of ownership on 30 July 2026
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The network serves almost 6,000 customers across 35 buildings
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heat is metered at each building's substation rather than inside the flat
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the building is the customer, the households behind the meter are not
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none of them can switch supplier
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Bristol City Leap puts the network at the equivalent of over 13,000 homes
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a March 2026 policy paper from the University of Bath's Brunel Centre puts it at 6,500
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puts 2024 heat sales at £3.1m
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production costs of £4.3m
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losses since 2023 at £12.3m
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Bristol's passed out of council ownership in January 2023 and is changing hands again
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the households it heats cannot switch
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Vattenfall is not registered with Heat Trust in Bristol and gives the reason that registration requires direct customers, which it does not have here
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A statutory regulator arrived only on 27 January 2026, when Ofgem's first consumer protection rules for heat networks took effect
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:950ee35088e978924fc34eb247f688bf637b0c5042c00143593e73809d3e6ca9
src-32334859c56d213dStatutory register. Incorporated 31 October 2018 under the previous name ENERGY SERVICE BRISTOL LIMITED, held until 18 Aug 2020; status Active; SIC 35300 "Steam and air conditioning supply"; registered office now 5th Floor 70 St. Mary Axe, London EC3A 8BE — Vattenfall's UK address, not a Bristol one. Last accounts made up to 31 December 2024.
src-21346713e1d50464The ownership chain in the primary register: Bristol City Council notified 31 October 2018, ceased 17 August 2020; Bristol Holding Limited notified 17 August 2020, ceased 4 January 2023; Vattenfall Heat Uk Limited notified 4 January 2023 with "Ownership of shares – 75% or more", "Ownership of voting rights - 75% or more" and "Right to appoint or remove directors". Still the active entry when read, so the onward sale is not shown as completed.
src-0309a58a9fef45dbDelivery body for the UK government's Heat Network Investment Project. States "The original network was completed in 2016" and that Bristol City Council was awarded £3.6m to extend it and build an additional energy centre. Funder documentation of its own grant, so not an independent evaluation.
src-d9ab2616110bfcb8Names the four areas served and nine planned network areas; states "The Bristol heat network currently supplies the equivalent of over 13,000 homes with heating and hot water"; explains that "To formally register a heat network with Heat Trust requires direct customers, which Vattenfall doesn't currently have in Bristol." Its regulation line — Ofgem "is set to formally start in 2025" — was already out of date when read; the rules started on 27 January 2026.
src-17ef1a6cb720b05cSets the metering boundary: supply runs to the building boundary as a bulk supply connection, the heat exchange "marks the point of ownership for bulk supply connections", and the variable part of the charge is "metered at the building's substation". Heat Interface Units are described for direct customers, which the operator says it does not have in Bristol.
src-4e226a46f9f355e4Describes the "twenty-year partnership between Bristol City Council, Ameresco and Vattenfall", a pledge to "invest £475 million by 2030 to expand the heat network and provide heating and hot water to the equivalent of 12,000 homes", and the Castle Park heat pump serving 2,500 homes. A second operator page states 11,500 homes-equivalent "committed" — a pipeline figure, not a connection count.
src-52a7fb2f5c71fd3bBuilder's own case study: a "3MW water source heat pump" drawing from the floating harbour, lifting temperature to 70–80°C, with a thermal store and backup gas boilers, quoted at "a COP of 3.18" and delivering about 80% of the energy centre's heat. Contractor material, so media grade at best. It says the pump "contributes to heating 1,000 homes and businesses", against Bristol City Leap's 2,500 — an unreconciled conflict.
src-02c8c58150fb1434Reports Vattenfall selling "three of its heat network businesses to London-based Reinova Capital" — Bristol Heat Networks, Midlothian Energy and Vattenfall Brent Cross — at a price "estimated at hundreds of millions". Vattenfall itself would say only that it "began an ownership assessment of its UK district heating business in March 2025, and that assessment is ongoing", so the buyer is reported rather than confirmed by the seller.
src-d9acfdb0c1a7d220Self-published local journalism working from Bristol City Council's decision papers and the company's filed accounts. Carries "The Bristol heat network serves almost 6,000 customers across 35 buildings in Redcliffe, Old Market, Bedminster and Temple"; "None of them can switch."; the council's £53.3m capital budget at transfer (£22.7m borrowed, £22.5m government grants, £8.2m connection fees); the 2024 accounts figures; the special share as "the council's right to approve a change of ownership"; a new £31m cap on what the council can recover under Ameresco's parent company guarantee; and a going-concern warning from the company's auditors. Single-sourced for the financial figures.
src-2fffa448333b0d45Reports the council valuing the networks at £20m on book value ahead of the transfer to Vattenfall, with the opposition finance spokesman Cllr Geoff Gollop arguing that book value is "not a normal accounting metric" and that "The published figure almost certainly represents an undervaluation". The page could not be read from here — the BBC blocks automated fetching on both bbc.co.uk and bbc.com — so its content was established through search results only and no date is recorded.
src-1c37e567e93fe4c2Policy insight by Finlay Perry drawing on an interview with Vattenfall's business development director. States the network "currently supplies the equivalent of 6,500 homes, with goals to reach 12,000 by 2030" — roughly half the figure the operator's own partnership site gives. Also gives the electricity-to-gas price ratio as 1:4.7 as of January 2026, the structural obstacle to electrifying heat.
src-6986394f5bef77aaThe regulator's own notice: "On 27 January 2026, new consumer protection rules will be formally launched to allow Ofgem to begin regulating heat networks in Great Britain." Before that date heat network customers in Great Britain had no statutory energy regulator.