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Author Archives: Admin
‘How Green Will the New Heygate Be?’
December 2012: 35percent.org is an useful blog focussed on sustainability issues related to the massive new development proposed at the Elephant and Castle (see earlier post on this).
The top link to the site sets out some current concerns over the energy proposals on the site, especially in relation to connecting the different energy centres on site (which would hep form a more efficient area-wide heat network), and also the likelihood of using biomethane gas (the proposal in the developers application is to use the Green Gas Certification Scheme to link the London scheme to a site which is injecting biomethane elsewhere in the national gas transmission grid). The blog entry states that no such injection schemes are currently operating, which was true at the time of writing (early November 2012) but, coincidentally, the Poundbury anaerobic digestion (AD) in Dorset began operation just over a week ago (see here and here) and is injecting renewable gas generated from the AD into the gas grid.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged Decentralised Energy, Natural Gas, Planning, Southwark
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London academy links to district-heating scheme
December 2012: “Connecting the Walworth Academy into the local district heating scheme was the final phase in a rebuilding and expansion of the school’s facilities, giving it a new, state of the art study environment for engineering, science, technology and mathematics.” Heat is supplied from the Aylesbury Housing Estate’s district heating scheme. Further information here and here.
Excess Winter Mortality index figure highest in London
December 2012: The Office of National Statistics (ONS) last week issued its annual statistical bulletin with provisional figures of excess winter deaths (also referred to as excess winter mortality – EWM) in England and Wales for the winter period 2011/12, and final figures for the winter period 2010/11. Points to note include some important results in relation to London:
- In common with other countries, in England and Wales more people die in the winter than in the summer.
- EWM = winter deaths – average non-winter deaths
- There were an estimated 24,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2011/12 – an 8 per cent reduction compared with the previous winter.
- The regions of London, the South East and the East of England showed an increase in EWM between 2010/11 and 2011/12, with the largest percentage point increase occurring in London (2.0 percentage points higher)
- London also had the highest EWM index in 2011/12, with 18.9 per cent more deaths in winter compared with the non-winter period, compared with an average of 15.4 per cent for England and Wales
- Reference Table 2 shows that the increase in London occurred exclusively in people aged 85 and over. Furthermore, people aged 85 and over in London had the highest EWM index of any age group in any region.
- The Health Protection Agency reported that London had the highest level of influenza-like illness (ILI) within England and Wales (Health Protection Agency, 2012a), which may partly explain why this region also showed the highest level of excess winter mortality.
Direct link to the ONS bulletin here.
Energy and Climate Questions to the Mayor
November 2012: This month the Mayor has been asked questions in relation to: the way the supplier obligation support for energy efficiency works and its shortfalls in terms of London; promotion of anaerobic digestion plants through the London Plan; how the GLA’s asset strategy can promote the low carbon economy; compensating for unavoidable carbon emissions during the Olympic Games; the Mayor’s view on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS) and the international response to aviation being included in the EUETS.
Previous questions to the Mayor can be found here.
Posted in News
Tagged Anaerobic Digestion, Carbon Emissions, CERT, ECO, Green Deal, Olympics
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‘ New Energy Efficiency Scheme could add over £94 to energy bills’
27 November 2012: Energy sector trade body Energy UK has published research undertaken by NERA on what they believe are errors in the Government’s assumptions of the cost per household of the new Energy Company Obligation (ECO). The report’s findings suggest that:
- DECC estimated that the ECO would cost energy suppliers £1,300 million per year (about £53 per customer per annum). ..Our analysis suggests that correcting unreliable assumptions in DECC’s modelling would raise the estimated cost of the programme to around £1,700 million per annum (ca. £69 per customer per annum).
- In addition, there may be a problem with DECC’s reliance on a “stated preference” study, a form of customer research which is known to suffer from a bias in the case of environmental programmes (i.e. the “warm glow” of appearing to favour good works leads people to state that they will pay more for environmental programmes than they will pay in reality). DECC has not published the study, so it is difficult to quantify precisely the impact of any bias inherent in the answers. A simple and transparent sensitivity is to assume that respondents might have ignored the “hassle costs” that an ECO project would impose on them. Adjusting DECC’s model of customer preferences by a comparable amount raises the cost of the programme further still, to around £2,350 million per annum (ca. £94 per customer perannum), but the final cost could be much higher.
Download the report here – The Costs of the Energy Company Obligation.
The impact on the fuel poor of the reduction in fuel poverty budgets in England
27 November 2012: Association of Conservation of Energy and Energy Bill Revolution campaign report setting out how the Government has significantly reduced the financial support it gives the fuel poor. The key findings of the research are as follows:
- Firstly, we find that the total budget likely to be reaching the fuel poor in England falls from £1.191 billion in 2009 to £879 million in 2013. This is a reduction of 26%.
- Secondly, we find that of the total budget reaching the fuel poor, the energy efficiency budget in England declines from £376 million in 2009 to £209 million in 2013, a reduction of 44%.
- Thirdly, we estimate that of this total energy efficiency budget reaching the fuel poor, the number of households in England receiving energy efficiency measures declines from 150,000 households – already just 3.8% of fuel poor households – to 100,000 households, an even smaller 2.6% of households projected by DECC to be fuel poor in 2013. This is a reduction of 33% from a base that was already too low. One of the main reasons for this decline is the elimination of the Warm Front programme in 2013.
- Fourthly, we find that although the programmes are slightly better targeted in 2013, the proportion of fuel poor households in England actually receiving support from the total budget increases from only 31% to 33%.
The report can be downloaded here.
The Mayor states national energy policy “in chaos”
November 2012: Further to his points made on fuel poverty and energy efficiency at last week’s Mayoral Question Time session, the Mayor also made some forthright statements on the current state of the UK’s energy policy (see page 44 of session transcript here ).
” I happen to think that the energy policy of this country is in chaos at the moment and we need to sort it out.
“…prices are going up but supply is increasingly insecure.”
“It is pretty obvious to everybody that the current strategy is incoherent.
“We seem to be going for more and more wind farms which are not actually doing the job.”
The Mayor stated that such concerns led to the convening of his first ‘electricity summit’ earlier this month and to the formation of a ‘High-level Working Group with the energy industry to examine infrastructure and investment issues in relation to London’s current and future energy needs. The group’s work will begin in January 2013.
Has the Mayor ‘shown enough political leadership to tackle fuel poverty in London’?
November 2012: This was the question asked of the Mayor at last week’s Question Time session with the London Assembly in City Hall. The transcript of the discussion has just been posted on the GLA’s website – the fuel poverty section runs from pages 43-46. The Mayor responded with the following points:
- On recent increases in energy prices the Mayor stated that “We have repeatedly had the energy companies in . What they are getting away with at the moment is the claim that they are obliged to spend so much on renewables and energy efficiency of one kind or another and their claim is that that is pushing up the cost of providing energy. Whether or not that is true is very, very hard for me to evaluate.”
- The Mayor has brought up London’s specific energy issues directly with DECC – “I have been in touch with Greg Barker who is responsible for this and my Office has been in touch with the Department repeatedly for a long time.”
- That “we are committed to expanding our policy of retrofitting. I do not pledge that we can do that in all homes and in many cases the housing stock in London does not make it easy for us to do this but we are going ahead, as I say, with a programme that I think not only offers the opportunity for home owners to cut their bills but also offers massive scope for employment. I think it is a shame that successive Governments have not taken this up more vigorously.”
Posted in Energy Efficiency, News
Tagged Energy Efficiency, Fuel Poverty, Mayor, RE:NEW
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The DECC-Local Government MoU
November 2012: A recent Parliamentary Question has provided an update, of sorts, on the DECC-Local Government MoU. Firstly – a quick re-cap. On 9 March 2011 Chris Huhne, the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, signed a “ground-breaking Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) designed to recognise the pivotal role local councils have in tackling climate change.” See the full news release issued at the time here. The MoU itself can be downloaded here.
The MoU set out how DECC and the Local Government (LG) Group would work together to help and encourage all councils to take firm action to:
- reduce the carbon emissions from their own estate and operations
- reduce carbon emissions from homes, businesses and transport infrastructure, creating more, appropriate renewable energy generation, using council influence and powers; and
- participate in national carbon reduction initiatives at the local level, particularly the roll out of the Green Deal, smart metering and renewable energy deployment.
The MoU was to be underpinned by a number of actions including a management board on which DECC and the LG Group will be represented and an action plan that would take forward specific actions outlined in the LG Group ‘offer’ to DECC.
Though there has been some movement in DECC’s relationship with local government this year, specifically the publication of revised HECA guidance, and the commissioning of the Committee on Climate Change to provide guidance for local authorities (also see here) on reducing carbon emissions, there has been next to no mention of the MoU. It was therefore useful that Shadow Energy Minister Luciana Berger MP recently raised the issue of progress on some specific actions raised in the MoU:
Luciana Berger: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (1) with reference to his Department’s Memorandum of Understanding with the Local Government Group, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that its policy-making process takes account of the role of local councils in achieving or developing policy; [126591]
(2) when his Department plans to publish a review of the Memorandum of Understanding between his Department and the Local Government Group; [126592]
(3) whether he has met senior political representatives from the Local Government Group of the Local Government Association to review the Memorandum of Understanding, the Annual Report and council action on climate change set out in the Memorandum of Understanding between his Department and the Local Government Group; [126593]
(4) which senior civil servants from his Department have been assigned to work with the Local Government Association on steps to ensure that the milestones in Annex A of the Memorandum of Understanding between his Department and the Local Government Group are met; [126596]
(5) what meetings his Department has facilitated between the Local Government Group and other Government departments as set out in the Memorandum of Understanding between his Department and the Local Government Group. [126597]
Gregory Barker: My officials and I hold discussions with the Local Government Association (LGA) on a range of policy issues of mutual interest, including on the memorandum of understanding (MoU).
To my knowledge, the Department has not facilitated meetings between the LGA and other Government Departments.
I am currently discussing with the LGA the report of progress against the MoU. This work is led in DECC by officials from the Energy Efficiency Deployment Office.
A further PQ on another MoU action elicited a similar disappointing response:
Luciana Berger: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (1) who sits on his Department’s Devolved, Sub-National Reform and Local Carbon Accountability Project Board; [126594]
(2) how many times his Department’s Devolved, Sub-National Reform and Local Carbon Accountability Project Board has met since March 2011. [126595]
Gregory Barker: The Devolved, Sub-National Reform and Local Carbon Accountability Project Board membership comprised officials from DECC, the Department of Communities and Local Government, HM Treasury, Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the Local Government Association.
There have been no meetings of the board since March 2011.
A final (to date) attempt by Ms Berger to find out how DECC was working with local government on energy issues didn’t help either.
A speech by Ed Davey to the LGA earlier this year highlighted the importance of local authorities stating “the more I do the job, it’s clearer that national government can’t deliver on its energy and climate change policy without local government.” It’s hence a great shame that this unique relationship on energy and climate issues between central and local government has been all but abandoned.
DECC to support Mayor’s RE:FIT programme
November 2012: Amongst the various proposals set out in the Government recently published energy efficiency strategy is one relating to the Mayor’s energy efficiency retrofit programme targeted at public sector buildings, RE:FIT, with DECC announcing that the Department will be:
34. …funding the initial rollout of the RE:FIT programme nation-wide to public sector organisations and will work with Local Partnerships and the Government Procurement Service to establish this support. The Greater London Authority has pioneered the Mayor of London’s award winning programme to deliver the energy efficiency improvement of the public sector estate. This is achieved through a simplified ESCO procurement framework and the provision of a RE:FIT Programme Delivery Unit team to provide technical support to projects.
35. The RE:FIT concept was initially piloted in 42 public sector buildings across London.These projects retrofitted energy savings measures to approximately 146,000m2 of building space, delivering over 7,000 tonnes reduction in carbon emissions and an average 28% reduction in energy consumption identified.The total spend was £7 million with a simple payback period of 7 years. Since the success of this pilot over 100 buildings have now successfully undergone retrofits and over 50 organisations, including Local Authorities, NHS Trusts, and Universities, have committed to using RE:FIT and the project pipeline contains in excess of 300 further properties. A new RE:FIT Framework has recently been tendered which further develops the approach and enables a wide range of financing options to be used.
Further information on the Mayor’s RE:FIT programme can be found here. No further information on the national rollout of RE:FIT appears to be available as yet.
DECC Community Energy Strategy Update
November 2012: DECC’s recently released Energy Efficiency Strategy includes the following update on its work to develop the first ever Community Energy Strategy for the UK:
“DECC is working with stakeholder groups to develop a Community Energy Strategy that will support activity with communities across the Department. This strategy will inform how the Department works with community groups and local organisations across all aspects of buying, saving and generating energy, and make sure our community schemes are fit for purpose. The DECC Community Energy Strategy is to be developed over the coming months, and will be available for use from Summer 2013.“
DECC established a Community Energy Contact Group (CECG) earlier this year to help develop the Community Energy Strategy. Minutes of the Group’s October meeting have just been posted online by DECC – and provide some interesting detail on current discussions between the Group and DECC including – under item 5 – the CECG’s views on what are – from ‘Energy for London’s perspective – some sensible ‘must haves’ for the forthcoming strategy. The minutes can be accessed here.