Energy Efficiency

Retrofit London project announced

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Admin

May 2014: News that the Greater London Authority has approved funding, through the European Development Regeneration Fund (ERDF) to award “£525,000  to LB Enfield for the Retrofit London project, to deliver business support to Small and Medium Enterprises in London”.

The approval document sets out that “The ‘Retrofit London’ project is led by LB Enfield, working in partnership with LB Haringey, LB Waltham Forest, LB Lewisham, Enterprise Enfield (EE) and North London Chamber of Commerce (NLCofC).
Retrofit London aims to support 175 SMEs based in Enfield, Haringey, Waltham Forest and Lewisham, to access new market opportunities, particularly market opportunities driven by the carbon reduction and energy saving agenda.“

The approval document also provides some background to the ERDF and sets out that the total project cost is £1.05m as a result of match funding from the partners involved:

LB Enfield (Procurement team): £42,000
Enfield Council: £130,405
LB Haringey: £100,000
LB Lewisham: £75,000
LB Waltham Forest (Procurement team):£42,000
LB Waltham Forest (Economic Development team): £38,000
North London Chamber of Commerce: £47,595
Enterprise Enfield: £50,000

A tender was issued for a Project Manager for the programme, the deadline for which was earlier this week. The project is to set to run until December 2015.

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“inner-city areas are often the most heat-energy efficient”

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Admin

21 May 2014: “New research shows that the compact, taller buildings typical of inner-city areas are often the most heat-energy efficient – research by LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and the European Institute for Energy Research looked specifically at the role building design can play at the impact of the basic configurations of residential buildings (“urban morphology”) on energy demand. This impact is a result of two principal determinants of the thermal performance of buildings: the level of exposure to sunlight, which allows buildings to absorb passive solar heat; and the relative amount of external walls, which lead to heat losses” – read full Guardian article here.

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Lighting London

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Admin

April 2014: Interesting LSE Cities event: “With the arrival of LED and ‘smart’ technologies, lighting has become an increasingly important area of interest and concern for planners, architects and designers. Debates around urban illumination are driven by the global narrative of the ‘sustainable city’, but also specific aesthetic motifs, issues around safety and security as well as light pollution. Despite this centrality, light is relatively invisible….” How poetic… and how true. Gotta be worth going to!

Taking place at 10.30am on 24 April – details here.

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London’s first Passivhaus School

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Admin

March 2014: News that a £5m contract has been awarded “by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for the refurbishment of Stebon Primary School. The school will be the first Passivhaus School in London and only the sixth in the UK to be delivered under the highly sustainable Passivhaus standards, which are more traditionally used in house building.”

A submission to Tower Hamlets council as part of the planning application sets out some detail of how the refurb will seek to achieve a passivhaus standard:

  • The sustainability and energy strategy have informed the building design. Passive design strategies have been adopted and include good orientation, compact building form, low U values, high air tightness, thermal mass, maximizing natural daylight internally, and solar control to southerly facades.
  • Passivhaus utilises passive solar gain and night time purge ventilation in summer, coupled with heat recovery and rigorous thermal and airtightness requirements to greatly reduce energy consumption.

The report goes on to say to “achieve Passivhaus certification requires:

  • Considered form and orientation – typically compact and east-west orientation making Stebon a good contender
  • High levels of insulation
  • Elimination of thermal bridges
  • Air tightness
  • Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR)
  • Winter solar gains
  • Summer natural ventilation with night-time cooling”

An energy statement for the development provides further detail.

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Energy & Green Sky Thinking

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Admin

March 2014: This year’s Green Sky Thinking programme has been announced and, as with previous years, has a selection of really excellent events focussed on sustainability and the built environment. Lots of fascinating subjects covered – below are links to some of the energy-related talks – check the programme linked below for the full week’s activities. All events take place between 28 April – 2 May.

Refurb, Retrofit or Rebuild – Making London energy efficient for 2018

Cutting the CO2 Out of Construction

When will the Lights Go Out?

Business Attitudes Towards District Heating

Clever Energy: People Power

Making Buildings Work

And a few others – details of which are on the programme, but dates to be confirmed. These include:

The Value of Energy Efficiency in Commercial Buildings

How will we Heat London?

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Assembly calls for action to cut fuel bills for 1.2 million London homes

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Admin

5 March 2014: London Assembly press release calling “on Mayor Boris Johnson to press Whitehall to reverse cuts to programmes designed to reduce energy consumption in the capital. A motion agreed at a today’s Assembly meeting urges the Mayor to lobby the government to rethink reductions to the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) and a two year extension to the time limit for energy companies to fulfil the requirements. The Mayor should also lobby ministers to set out a national infrastructure project that will help to cut fuel bills for 1.2 million London homes by 2015.” Read the news release here.

Also today, the government released their consultation on the revised changes to ECO.

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London Energy Efficiency Programme Scrutinised

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Admin

March 2014: The London Assembly Environment Committee held the first of two oral evidence sessions on progress made by the GLA’s energy and climate programmes. The first of these sessions was held on 6 February and focussed on the Mayor’s home energy efficiency programme, RE:NEW. Evidence was provided by representatives from a number of organisations, including EDF Energy, the Energy Saving Trust, Hillingdon Borough Council and the Mayor’s Housing Advisor. The full transcript can be accessed here – and a webcast can also be viewed here. Points of interest raised during the debate included:

  • The RE:NEW programme is awaiting confirmation they they have been successful in their application to the European Investment Bank’s European Local Energy Assistance (ELENA) programme for £2.6m to put in place a support team over a three year period starting from April 2014 (the RE:NEW programme support team is currently operated for the GLA by Capita).
  • RE:NEW is  currently working with Greenwich, Havering, Newham and Westminster, Hyde Housing and Peabody Gallions developing “bigger projects that would be more attractive in terms of bringing in Energy Company Obligation (ECO) funding“.
  • Borough responses suggested that RE:NEW was “not very hands-on with project development.” RE:NEW is keen to find out what boroughs are doing but “there is very little support there for boroughs in terms of developing projects and overcoming planning issues.“
  • RE:NEW should be instead be focussing on what the GLA could do to “enhance [borough activities] even further if it wants to deliver ambitious carbon reduction targets“
  • Further criticism was targeted at the RE:NEW programme stating that the funding resource was mainly going to Capita : “We see that the resources are actually on those people, basically, for the Capita resource. Local authorities are not really getting the benefit of that on the whole“.
  • An often confusing debate takes place on  how many homes were retrofitted through the RE:NEW programme and how many homes were insulated across London in total. A number of 400,000 homes is quoted by the Mayor’s Housing Advisor during the session. Though not explained, this number is most likely made up of the following: 327,00 treated through the Government’s CERT programme over the period April 2008 – December 2012 (see cell V35 of EST CERT data here), and 70,000 homes visited by the RE:NEW team and provided with ‘easy measures’ over the period July 2011-December 2012 (see MQ here for details). For more on this, see earlier post here.
  • RE:NEW Phase 3 has a target of retrofitting 175,000 homes.

Just ahead of the evidence session – somewhat belatedly – the Mayor published the full evaluation report of the main RE:NEW roll-out phase which ran from July 2011-May 2012 (a summary report had previously been issued – details here).  A second oral evidence session will take place on 26 March, focusing on the Mayor’s decentralised energy programmes, with the Mayor’s energy advisor, Matthew Pencharz, in attendance.

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London office energy use

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Admin

February 2014: A new report produced by the UK Green Building Council’s (UKGBC) Zero Carbon Non Domestic Task Group examines the case for action supporting zero carbon non domestic buildings by 2019. The report includes the following information on energy consumption in London office buildings.

“Figure 3 demonstrates the impact of building regulations in a portfolio of London office buildings constructed since 1998. In particular the 50% decrease in ‘landlord and shared services’ energy is consistent; landlord and shared service energy is, in the majority, regulated energy which is covered by the building regulations. The variation in occupier direct energy use reflects the variation in densities, small power and hours of operation.”

The report can be downloaded here.

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North London Green Deal Funding

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Admin

4 March 2014:Welcome announcement today from DECC that the first tranche of funding to local authorities from the Green Deal Communities Fund includes an unspecified amount to “6 north London boroughs led by Haringey“.

No details have been released as yet in relation to the Mayor’s bid to the fund with 7 London boroughs: Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Greenwich, Kingston, Redbridge, Sutton and Wandsworth (see here and here for more details) – however, this was only submitted to DECC in late December. The Mayor is also supporting a bid “led by LB Camden which will drive take-up of Green Deal within the private rented sector.”

Following the announcement on 2 December 2013, there is now £80 million of capital funding available under the Fund.

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Energy & Climate Questions to the Mayor

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: This month the Mayor has been asked questions in relation to:

the Mayor’s meetings with energy ministers; KPIs under the Mayor’s Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy; establishing a London Energy Cooperative; ECO funding in London; the number of energy suppliers signed up to the Mayor’s MoU; the Mayor’s support for the Energy Bill Revolution’s Cold Homes Week; Kew Gardens decentralised energy scheme; London avoiding the ‘capacity crunch‘; solar installations on GLA buildings; the underheating of Londoners’ homes; the RE:NEW programme energy efficiency targets; the Mayor’s concerns over Government ‘Allowable Solutions‘ proposals; insulation industry jobs; Excess Winter Deaths; insulation projects stalled under ECO; the stalled Affinity Sutton insulation project; RE:NEW targets; retrofitting and planning restrictions; renewable energy installations on the GLA estate; GLA funding to Capita to manage the RE:NEW programme; British Gas funding to ECO; the Mayor’s High Level Electricity Working Group; LED streetlighting projects; CO2 savings achieved under RE:NEW; delayed CO2 savings under RE:NEW; the Climate Change Leaders for a Low Carbon London fuel poverty project; planning CO2 target requirements; meetings with DCLG; biofuel and London buses; GLA Environment Team budgets over next two years; Mayor’s application to the Government’s Green Deal Communities Fund; and tendering for License Lite services.

Previous months questions to the Mayor can be found here.

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Further support for RE:NEW programme

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: The GLA has decided to seek additional support in its bid to DECC’s Green Deal Communities Fund. The approval form states that:

“The GLA is seeking approval to commission Create and Sustain Limited through a Single Source Action to provide services up to a maximum value of £27,000 to support the RE:NEW programme from November to March 2014.

The key aims for this period are:

  • to develop the GLA’s bid to the DECC Green Deal Communities Fund
  • to liaise with, and gain buy in from key stakeholders including London boroughs, social landlords and delivery agents as necessary to complete the bid
  • to work with the London Landlord Accreditation Service to develop the bid
  • to provide additional support to the RE:NEW Programme which could include:
  • finalising the MoUs with Energy Suppliers
  • support with the paperwork and processes needed to establish the project management resource if successful with the DECC funding
  • support a review of the RE:NEW Framework“

The £20m Green Deal Communities Fund was launched by Government in July 2013 – details here and then, in December 2013, as part of the announced changes to ECO, DECC stated that the Government “will increase the funds available to local authorities this year through Green Deal Communities from £20 million to £80 million, to help support ‘street-by-street’ programmes for hard-to-treat homes.” If London were to secure funding on a rough population basis – as much as £10m from this new fund could be directed to the capital’s energy efficiency retrofit programmes.

The RE:NEW programme is also presently supported by Capita (see here and here) until the end of March 2014.

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Mayor raises concerns over CLG Allowable Solutions proposals

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: The Mayor has recently posted online his response to the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) Allowable Solutions (AS) consultation, released last year. Allowable Solutions are central to the achievement of the Government’s commitment to delivering zero carbon homes by 2016, and have been under discussion for several years now, with significant delays in any Ministerial decisions being made (too much to go into here – see articles here and here) . The Zero Carbon Hub have also led on much of the detailed development behind the potential measures that could be used.

The Mayor raises a number of concerns to Government over their proposals, including:

  • London is less likely to benefit from them than other parts of the country, because London’s building stock and the complex logistics of working in London make it more expensive to install both retrofit and energy supply measures.
  • The current proposals are likely to mean that AS in London are uncompetitive. In combination with proposals under the Housing Standards Review, there is significant risk that the well established plans in London to support the deployment of decentralised energy and heat networks through the planning system will be undermined.
  • It is unlikely that district heating will be funded under AS without revisions to the proposals.The development of decentralised heat and power generation and district heating forms an integral part of London’s and other cities’ contribution to the delivery of Government’s heat strategy. It appears to be an ambition for AS that they should support district heating and it might often make sense for a developer to contribute to a district heating network if his/her future developments could in turn receive low carbon affordable heat from that network. However, except perhaps if the central fund route were the sole option, it is difficult to see how the proposed options would support district heating.

London boroughs are already making significant headway in establishing their own allowable solution mechanisms as a consequence of the Government’s delay in setting out their own policy – see details of  Islington’s Carbon Offset Fund here.

See article in Building magazine also detailing the Mayor’s response.

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