Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what type of heating system is the primary source of heating in each building occupied by his Department and its agencies; and what fuel is used by those heating systems.

The Government Property Agency (GPA) acts as a landlord to government department clients, including Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for International Trade, the Department for Education and others.

The majority of GPA’s properties have heating systems served by gas fired boilers. This includes the Whitehall District Heating System, which is a system owned and operated by GPA that distributes heating to premises in the Whitehall Campus from conventional fossil fuel boilers.

GPA’s newly developed assets have utilised more carbon efficient forms of heating, such as the new hub in Birmingham at 23 Stephenson Street, which has a mechanical heat recovery system with electricity as its fuel source.

GPA has started a Net Zero Offices Programme, which seeks to remove fossil fuel boilers (where they have reached end of economic life) and replace them with more environmental forms of heating such as use of air source heat pumps and, in the case of the Whitehall District Heating System, the utilisation of ground source heat pumps. The Net Zero Offices Programmes is seeking funding for its heat decarbonisation projects through applications to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.