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Decentralised Energy
Proposals for a North London Decentralised Energy Network
August 2011: Enfield have released their plans for the development of one of the largest “green developments in the country“. The Meridian Water development aims to create 5,000 new homes, 3,000 new jobs, three schools, a nursery, doctors’ surgery, shops, parks, open spaces, leisure facilities, a police drop in centre and significant improvements to transport links on the 90 hectare site at the heart of the Upper Lee Valley. As well as playing a major part in regenerating Edmonton and its surrounding areas, the £1.3 billion project aims to be low carbon, becoming one of the main hubs within the proposed North London Decentralised Energy Network.
Details are set out in Enfield’s Meridian Water Masterplan Consultation document which set outs that:
“Meridian Water presents an extraordinary opportunity for a site-wide district heating network which takes advantage of the proposals for a Borough wide decentralised energy network that builds on the infrastructure assets of the Lee Valley. The nearby energy centres and industrial corridor creates the prime opportunity to capture the released heat from these operations to deliver secure, low cost, low carbon energy and heating to businesses and homes in Meridian Water and beyond.”
The deadline for response to the consultation document is 5th September 2011
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged Community Heating, Decentralised Energy, Enfield, Planning
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District Heating Good Practice: Learning from the LCIF
August 2011: Two London schemes are profiled in the Homes and Communities Agency’s (HCA) Low Carbon Infrastructure Fund (LCIF) programme ‘lessons learned’ report published today. The Fund was set up in 2009 to provide funding for the district heating infrastructure needed to link housing schemes to new and existing low carbon CHP plants.
- LCIF funding provided £3m to develop the spine heat network for the Greenwich Peninsula. The Greenwich Peninsula, with its proposals for more than 10,000 new homes, is part of a larger, mixed-use scheme including commercial, retail, educational and leisure uses. The full combination of works includes two significant CHP pipework ‘spines’ which capture all significant development areas on the Peninsula
- Cranston Estate, Hackney where £0.5m grant funding was provided to install a district heat pipe for the retrofitting of a CHP plant, providing electricity and heat to three high-density housing estates.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Library, News
Tagged Decentralised Energy, Greenwich, Hackney, Housing
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Royal Marsden CHP
27 July 2011: The Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton has announced that it will be installing a Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP) on site. The capacity of the gas-fired CHP unit isn’t given, but further information on the project is provided on the following press release from MITIE, the engineering company leading the development.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged CHP, Decentralised Energy, Hospitals, Sutton
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London Plan Energy & Climate Policies
26 July 2011: After close to two years of consultation, London’s new spatial strategy has been published by the Mayor. The London Plan forms part of the development plan for Greater London and London boroughs’ local plans need to be in general conformity with the London Plan. Its policies guide decisions on planning applications for new developments and strategies by councils and the Mayor. Chapter 5 of the strategy focuses on London’s response to climate change and building on previous versions of the London Plan (2004 and 2008), which achieved a significant impact on the carbon efficiency of new development, the new London Plan sets out a number of requirements. These include:
- CO2 savings of 25 per cent more than national building requirements at a minimum on all new developments
- As previously, all major development should provide detailed energy assessments on how these emission savings are to be made
- In contrast to the Government’s recent climb-down in its definition of ‘zero carbon’, London Plan Policy 5.2Da requires energy assessments to include separate details of unregulated emissions and proposals for how these emissions are to be reduced
- When preparing LDFs boroughs should identify opportunities for reducing CO2 emissions from the existing building stock, and also identify and establish decentralised energy network opportunities.
- With the aid of the London Heat Map, boroughs should develop energy master plans for specific decentralised energy opportunities.
Further policy requirements for decentralised energy systems, renewable and innovative energy technologies and the overheating and cooling of buildings are also set out in the Plan.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Library, News
Tagged Decentralised Energy, London Plan, Mayor, Planning
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Planning Guidance on Energy and Climate
18 July 2011: A leaked version of the Government’s forthcoming draft national planning policy framework (NPPF) has been reported on by Planning journal (you need to register to view the article). The NPPF is scheduled to get its proper release sometime later this month, following an announcement back in December 2010 where Planning Minister Greg Clark stated that Government would undertake a review of planning policy, designed to consolidate policy statements, circulars and guidance documents into a single concise National Planning Policy Framework (the Minister’s statement in the House of Commons gives some further background).
This consolidation was needed, it was argued, as “We have over 1000 pages of policy and guidance that have made the planning system unclear and burdensome. This creates vast amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy that burdens developers and limits the power of local people to shape their neighbourhoods around their vision. The new framework will integrate our current suite of policy statements and guidance into a single concise document. It will focus on the Government’s key priorities for planning and help deliver a more effective, decentralised system.”
Now, just ahead of the 2010 general election, the (previous) Government had released a draft of its new guidance to planning authorities on climate change. This version had significantly evolved and improved on the 2007 version, especially in relation to decentralised energy policy. It’s unclear how much of this will survive in the NPPF – the report on the leaked version summarises guidance on climate and energy issues only as:
Climate change Councils should plan for new development in locations and ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Renewables Authorities should give significant weight to the environmental, social and economic benefits of renewable or low-carbon energy projects, whatever their scale.
which isn’t that much to go on…. hopefully there will be a lot more in the final NPPF when it’s finally released…
On a related issue, the NPPF will not be covering planning in relation to major infrastructure projects such as power stations. A series of Energy National Policy Statements published by DECC on 23 June 2011 cover these. With their emphasis on – broadly – larger generating plant and associated infrastructure – it’s unclear how much impact the NPSs will directly have with respect to planning rules around new energy developments in London.
Failed CHP project in Lambeth…
July 2011: More on the disastrous Roupell Park Combined Heat and Power (CHP) scheme in Lambeth…
Boiler scheme could be in even more hot water
Crucial boiler papers lost in town hall error
Huhne’s great power reform lacks the local dimension
15 July 2011: Stephen Tindale of the Centre for European Reform, a former government environmental adviser and director of Greenpeace UK, blogs for endsreport.com highlighting that the main weakness of both the renewables roadmap and the electricity market reform white paper is the lack of articulation of the potential role of local government.
Stephen and co-author Prashant Vaze have first hand experience of what can be done, having recently published a report, Repowering Communities: Small-scale Solutions for Large-scale Energy Problems, examining in detail how cities, communities and local authorities from across Europe and North America have driven reductions in energy use and rolled out small scale, community level solutions.
“…the biggest transformation of the market since privatisation.”
12 July 2011: Amongst the myriad new market instruments proposed in today’s Planning Our Electric Future White Paper, most of which are targeted at larger scale generation plant, the Government does briefly turn to look at the opportunities from smaller decentralised (termed as distributed generation in the paper) generating plant. The White Paper states: “Used in the right ways and as part of an evidence-based approach to energy planning, distributed energy technologies have the potential to complement both each other and the wider centralised energy system. They can also be an important tool in engaging consumers in their energy use. In particular, we recognise that integrated, local-level distributed energy systems could be an important step towards a more coordinated approach that includes, for example, transport and waste.”
However, no specific proposals are put forward by Government to support smaller decentralised energy projects – the White Paper just goes on to say that “our proposals have been developed with consideration of all scales of generation. These include the following… both types of Feed-in Tariff (FiT) and the Capacity Mechanism will encourage distributed generation in different ways .”
The ‘Feed-in Tariff with Contract for Difference (FiT CfD)’ – as it’s more fully called – will offer long term power price contracts to generators, reducing the risks associated with market price volatility, and hence help stimulate investment in the development of new generation plant.
The Capacity Mechanism will effectively pay generators to be on standby to help ensure that there is a sufficient margin of generation capacity on the electricity system, hence providing additional stability and guarding against power blackouts. These capacity payments are being introduced as a result of concerns over the numbers of power stations being closed down over the next decade (around one third of UK generation plant – mostly aging coal and nuclear) and also due to the increased levels of intermittent generation being added to the network, predominantly wind power.
It is not clear as yet how the particular challenges faced by smaller decentralised energy schemes will be taken into account as all of the work done in the White Paper relates to larger centralised generating schemes. Though references are made in the White Paper to community-based schemes coming forward, no guidance has been provided on how Government will support such activities. The Government has left the resolution of these issues to be worked out by a new ‘Government Industry Contact Group on Distributed Energy’ to be convened later this year. The group is to “be chaired by Ministers, and will involve a small number of key industry representatives ” which seems to suggest that local authority representatives, key players in supporting the growth of such systems, will not be included on the group…
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Library, News
Tagged DECC, Decentralised Energy, Library
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Generation Plant Efficiency Needs to be Improved
12 July 2011: Radio 4’s Today programme coverage of the launch of the Government’s White Paper on electricity market reform (to be launched later today) included a short piece on how new generating plant would have to become much more efficient. The gave an example of London’s Citigen Combined Heat and Power (CHP) scheme, operated by E.ON, as a future example of how power stations would have to operate. Citigen is sited deep underground Smithfield’s market providing heat and cooling to a number of city institutions. Listen to the radio piece here.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged CHP, City of London, Decentralised Energy
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Pimlico and Whitehall Decentralised Energy
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.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged CHP, Community Heating, DECC, Decentralised Energy, Westminster
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Sky cuts ribbon on Europe’s greenest studios
4 Jul 2011: Business Green article providing details on Sky’s new broadcasting studios in Osterley, West London, which include on site a wind turbine, natural air cooling systems and also a “a biomass-fuelled combined cooling, heat and power (CCHP) plant which will supply at least 20 per cent of the energy needed for the building’s electricity and heating systems.”
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News, Renewable Energy
Tagged CHP, Hounslow, Renewable Energy
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Review of Renewable and Decentralised Energy Potential in South East England
15 June 2010: A review of the potential for renewable energy development in the South East developed using DECC’s methodology. The work was intended to inform the SE Regional Strategy. Due to the revocation of RSS and ending of regional planning, the reports have been tailored as far as possible to be useful to planning authorities in developing their own assessments and evidence base for local policy
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Library, Renewable Energy
Tagged Decentralised Energy
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