Monthly Archives: July 2011

State of the Environment report for London

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Admin

July 2011: London’s Environment Revealed is the first joint report on the State of the Environment in London, produced by the Greater London Authority, Environment Agency, Natural England and the Forestry Commission. The report looks at the state of London’s environment today, highlights the improvements that have been made, and the challenges the city faces. The report also features many projects and schemes at a local level that have improved the environment in London in recent years. Data presented for the report is also available as an Excel spreadsheet. GLA press release is available here.

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£16 million Waste Infrastructure Fund for London

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Admin

July 2011: The London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) LWARB has opened its second Waste Infrastructure fund.  The deadline for Expressions of Interest (EOI) forms is midday on Friday 30 September for projects that meet the two following criteria:

• An £11 million waste infrastructure loan fund for projects that meet the strategic requirements of LWARB. LWARB has a particular interest in projects located outside of east London* as well as those projects that help to bridge the capacity gap in the capital.

• A £5 million programme which will fund innovative waste solutions, giving London the opportunity to showcase technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, gas to grid, and waste derived transport fuels. This programme will include brokering partnerships with various parties such as technology providers, off-takers and fuel suppliers.

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Preventing Blackouts during the 2012 Games

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: Daily Mail story today which highlighted comments from Sports and Olympics minister Hugh Robertson who ” disclosed that London would have to boost its electricity supply to prevent possible blackouts during the Games. ‘There has been some worry that the energy system in London might not be resilient enough to cope with the huge demand,’ he said. ‘We have concluded an agreement to upgrade the energy capacity of all the circuits that service the Olympics so you don’t get a sudden problem.’

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£10m Anaerobic digestion loan fund launched

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Admin

July 2011: Defra Minister Lord Henley has officially opened a £10m Loan Fund that will help finance anaerobic digestion (AD) infrastructure across England. The fund aims to lend up to £10m over the next four years, with individual loans of between £50,000 and £1m. WRAP will open the fund for the first round of applications from today until October 31st 2011. Further details are available in the  ADLF Product Information Form. Responses to the Fund’s launch have been critical of Government policy on AD in a number of areas.

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Green Deal boost to retrofit market

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: H&V news highlight interesting developments in Birmingham in respsonse to the Government’s Green Deal programme:

“Private finance is set to back the Green Deal market as councils gear up to begin the first stages of multi-billion-pound housing retrofit programmes.

Last week, Construction News reported Birmingham City Council is about to tender for a lead partner for its Green Deal retrofit programme, which could see the council use its borrowing to underpin the initial stages of the programme.

With private finance the scheme could be expanded to retrofit about 200,000 homes, spending around £1 billion by 2026.” Read the full article at the link above.

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‘Ten Steps to Save the Cities’

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: The New Economics Foundation have set out today ten ‘tried-and-tested solutions’ from their work on local economic development to propose a new way forward for UK cities. Included amongst these is to “Invest in local energy. At present only 0.01 per cent of electricity in England is generated by local authority-owned renewables, despite the scope that exists to install projects on their land and buildings. In Germany the equivalent figure is 100 times higher.” Two examples are cited – both in London:

“The London Borough of Haringey has launched their own Haringey 40:20 organisation, involving business and civil society, because of the scale of the challenge – one in four homes will need to improve energy efficiency, 20,000 will need some kind of renewable generator capacity fitted, and 30,000 local homes will need to be linked up with local energy networks.

But if cities generate energy then local people are employed. If local authorities have a stake in the financing of this, then the surplus can be re-invested into the less well-off areas of a city to increase sustainability. If community organisations are able to invest in energy generation, like the pioneering Peckham Power company in London, then there will be an ongoing benefit to local people which has huge implications for local economies.”

 

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Behaviour Change and Energy use

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: The Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team published a report yesterday setting out how behavioural insights can be used to help people save energy and money. The report, Behaviour Change and Energy Use, launches a series of trials and “changes to government policy” (not sure what these are though…) which will make it easier for individuals to green their homes and use less energy. Several of these trials are based in London including:

  • How social networks might be harnessed to support the uptake of domestic energy efficiency measures. In partnership with B&Q and Kingston and Merton councils – a trial will run to test the impact of offering energy efficiency products and services at varying levels of discount depending on how many people opt in to the offer. In this trial, homeowners in Merton will be offered a discount on B&Q energy-efficient products such as loft and cavity wall insulation. People will be incentivised to encourage others in their local community to take up the offer with them –discounts for each household range from 10% fortwo households, to 15% for three households and25% for five households.Merton Council will highlight this through community engagement, also raising awareness about the discounted energy-efficient products by marketing the deal in their own local publications. The trial will be conducted between September and December 2011. To determine the effectiveness of this intervention, Kingston Council will act as a control where householders will be offered standard, non-discounted green products.
  • Testing the impact of helping to remove the ‘hassle factor’, specifically investigating whether minimising the hassle associated with loft clearance will encourage the uptake of loft insulation. B&Q and the London Borough of Sutton are currently discussing the terms of a trial which will test the effectiveness of offering a subsidised loft-clearing service in conjunction with loft insulation.
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How to get the community involved with energy efficiency

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: Daily Telegraph piece on energy advisor Jelena Kiselova who created and established an innovative Green Resident programme amongst her neighbours in Borough, Southwark.

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Green Streets, Strong Communities

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Admin

July 2011: Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) report evaluating the British Gas Green Streets community energy challenge in which 14 groups from communities in England, Scotland and Wales were selected to compete for a prize of £100,000. Each was given a share of a £2 million injection of capital, as well as technical advice from British Gas, to spend on a variety of microgeneration (or ‘microgen’) and energy efficiency measures in community buildings and surrounding households. Two London schemes were included amongst the communities involved: Ham and Petersham (Richmond) and Hyde Farm Climate Action Network (Wandsworth).

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Pimlico and Whitehall Decentralised Energy

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: DECC’s Carbon Management Plan (see Note 7 of press release linked) published yesterday, provides a brief update on an LDA project which involves the connection between the Whitehall and Pimlico district heating schemes in order to improve the operational efficiency of the two existing combined heat and power (CHP) plants. The Plan states that “The feasibility of linking to the Whitehall District Heating Scheme will be investigated if this Scheme is opened to new participants over the period of the Plan. An estimated cost for joining the scheme has been included in the planned projects below but it is not currently possible to estimate what the likely costs or savings would be.” £50,000 has been allocated by DECC to progress this action.

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Whitehall Exceeds Carbon Target

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Admin

7 July 2011: The Prime Minister announced yesterday that carbon emissions from central Government HQs and offices – the majority vast of which are based in London – have been slashed by nearly 14% in just one year, and told Whitehall it would have to go further by cutting emissions by 25% by 2015. Lots of Departmental performance information released, but of more interest is the end of year report – Carbon Reduction on the Government Office Estate – which makes interesting reading in relation to the projects implemented  in offices to help reduce energy/carbon. These include  energy saving competitions, implementing a 19°C set point, various energy conservation projects, introducing Automatic Meter Reading, and an also a successful CHP project at the DWP.  DECC’s behaviour change experiments are a good read: ‘scrunch‘ – which gives people who are working late incentives to congregate in one area, thereby allowing whole floors to be shut down; and ‘OK Commuter’, which helps people track their journeys to work. (‘no surprises’ that DECC’s full of Radiohead fans!)

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Underground technology could heat thousands of UK homes

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Admin

July 2011: The Environment Agency have produced a  good practice guide and position statement for ground source heating and cooling schemes. Environment Agency research indicates that there are around 12,000 ground source heat and cooling systems in the UK and that this figure could increase to more than 300,000 systems by 2020..
There are many challenges to the wide-spread use of GHSP in domestic sites in London, however, there are some excellent examples of commercial scale schemes operating in London, as the EA points out. These include the Sainsbury’s Crayford store in Bexley, and also the One New Change development in the City, which operates the largest GSHP installation in Europe (Land Securities press release from January 2011 at the opening of the development, providing details of the system).

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