Electric Wallpaper: Glasgow rolls out sustainable heating tech 

An interview with Glasgow University’s lecturer Dr Ahmad Taha shines light on a new sustainable heating alternative.

It will not come as a surprise to students living in Glasgow that UK homes are among the worst insulated in Europe. The average UK property loses heat three times faster than one in Germany, for example. This leads not only to chilly extremities but to increased greenhouse gas emissions. Heating accounts for 37% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, 75% of which comes from homes that rely on gas-fuelled central heating. 

Since April 2024, the Scottish Government’s New Build Heat Standard requires all new buildings to have climate-friendly heating systems. And the proposed Heat in Buildings Bill means that all homes and businesses will move away from fossil fuel-powered heating systems before the end of 2045. Electric wallpaper (EWP) stands as an innovative low-carbon alternative. 

There are three ways to transmit heat. Conduction is the most simple: we touch a hot object and feel its heat. The second is convection, in which heat is transferred through liquid or gas. This is used in conventional central heating appliances like the radiator. The final method is infrared, or radiation, where heat is emitted through waves that pass through air and directly heat objects. Electric wallpaper emits these far infrared rays.  

The name is rather misleading as the wallpaper typically goes on the ceiling, not walls, in order to utilise the larger surface area and allow for an even distribution of heat. The paper is made of a fraction of a millimetre sheet of graphene (a single layer of carbon atoms that is highly conductive), with two copper strips running along the edges. As the strips are electrified, the graphene emits far infrared rays which heat the room. The heat radiated is comparable to the feeling of stepping out of shade and into sunlight. 

The tech has already been commercialised by the company NexGen, but our understanding of the costs and benefits remains limited. In early 2024, the West of Scotland Housing Association began pioneering trials of this alternative heating solution. By October, the project was electrified by a current of innovation from Glasgow City Council; the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde; and financial support from Scotland Beyond Net Zero. 

“We need to look at things collectively”, says researcher from the University of Glasgow, Dr Ahmad Taha. He told me how previously “different housing associations and councils have looked at the problem of housing insulation individually”. This project stands as testament to how reaching net-zero requires cross-sector collaboration. 

The technology has been installed in 12 pre-1919 tenements in Springburn, Glasgow. The mission? To uncover whether electric wallpaper is a feasible, sustainable alternative to gas central heating. In the study, gas heating will be used for the first half of winter, after which point the wallpaper will be unrolled. 

Dr Taha is a lecturer at the Glasgow University School of Engineering. His interest in using technology to reduce energy consumption has made him a key player in this project. I asked him whether electric wallpaper really is a feasible alternative, provided that the cost of electricity is higher than gas. He explained that “we can’t just look at pricing. We need to look at differences in consumption and retention”. 

Heat is stored more efficiently in solids than gases. Where do you typically find radiators? They usually lurk in awkward positions behind sofas or in front of windows. They can take hours to heat up a room, especially in familiar high-ceilinged, bay-windowed tenements on a frosty January afternoon. Once you switch a radiator off, the warm air rises up and the cold creeps in immediately. If you want a flat that’s constantly warm, you need to leave the heating on practically all day. This wallpaper, on the other hand, “heats up a room in about 1-2 minutes” and can “retain heat for 30 hours” after being turned off. 

Unfortunately, this paper comes with a hefty price tag. The £4,000 installation cost (for a three-bedroom house) means that students reluctant to rely on central heating will have to stick to electric blankets, not electric wallpaper, at least for now. 

But Dr Taha is optimistic: “the more research we do, the more this cost will decrease”. The benefits of developing electrical alternatives to fossil fuel technology aren’t only financial. The project is currently powered by electricity from the grid, meaning it’s non-renewable. However, as the grid becomes increasingly fed by renewable sources, technologies like electric wallpaper will become entirely divorced from fossil fuels. 

Another efficient, albeit more expensive, heating alternative to fossil fuels is the heat pump. “From a cost perspective, both installation and running, the wallpaper seems to be better”, says Dr Taha, when asked how the two compare. “A crucial expense to bear in mind is long term maintenance. The wallpaper has very minimal comparative maintenance.” Fewer parts means fewer complications. 

“If the technology works as expected, there is a lot of potential here. It could revolutionise the industry.”  

Heating conservation is relatively easy to conceptualise in terms of saving energy but there are many covert ways that energy is consumed. One search on Chat GPT, for example, uses 10 times more electricity than a Google search. “That’s why it’s important to raise awareness. This is not an engineering topic. Decarbonisation is a socio-techno-economic challenge and it needs to be treated as such.” 

So I asked Dr Taha what readers can do to help accelerate Scotland’s green transition. “The way I see it, it has to be incremental. We have to find a balance between comfort and energy use, but we cannot expect people to completely change their behaviour overnight.”

He underscored the importance of awareness and education. “Start by reading and understanding what is really going on, what the impact of our actions is”. He continues, “look around us and observe the impacts of climate change”. The signs are there, we just need to ask why. “Once we understand the consequences, we can take action.” 

Responsible energy use is not a sacrifice, it’s an adjustment. “Once you start caring, you’d be surprised what you can do”.