News

Adaptation responses to climate change differ between global megacities

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Admin

March 2016: “The major cities in the Global North are protecting themselves against the risks of climate change, while cities in developing countries continue to suffer from massive under-investment. A study on ten cities, led by Lucien Georgeson of University College London, found that financing for climate change adaptation had increased across the board by 3% to 4% per year in recent years.” Read the full article Euroactiv article

“Without significant action against climate change, much of central London may be under water by 2050.”

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Boris confronted on “1,620,000 loft/cavity retrofit target shortfall”

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Admin

March 2016: …and so after eight years, we come to Boris’s last question time as London Mayor! And it’s good to see that energy and climate issues featured significantly yet again – a full list of which are posted here. In addition, a video has been posted online by London Assembly Green Party member Jenny Jones of her questions to the Mayor about a shortfall in his domestic energy efficiency programme RE:NEW.

And on that shortfall – Jenny Jones states that 95 per cent off the Mayor’s 1.7m home retrofit target has been missed with only 80,000 cavity and loft installations  achieved out of a target set by the Mayor of 1.7 million. In response, the Mayor states:

  • CO2 has reduced 14% since the programme began – in spite of London economic growth of 20%;
  • London has significant challenges on insulation due to the low incidence of cavity wall homes and conservation areas;
  • The Green Deal “wasn’t working well”
  • To compensate he has recently introduced a London boiler scrappage scheme;
  • After being called a “minnow” on London climate change action by Jenny Jones, when compared to other city leaders such as former New York Mayor Bloomberg and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Mayor responded that ‘he hasn’t been swanning  off around the world on climate change junkets … to give good green sermons”

The Mayor’s 2011 Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy actually states a 2015 target of retrofitting 1.2 million homes. And the June 2015 update to the Strategy sets out that “By the end of the 2013-14 financial year, over 100,000 homes were visited through the Mayor’s retrofit programmes. Coupled with wider market delivery, 500,000 home have been retrofitted across the capital”, this wider market delivery referring to the number of homes delivered through the Government’s ECO programme.

The disastrous cuts to ECO and failure of the Green Deal have dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the Mayor’s energy efficiency programme RE:NEW, a recent MQ stating that in “the 12 months from October 2014 RE:NEW supported the retrofit of over 4,500 homes.”

A lot depends on what is meant by retrofit: the initial phases of the RE:NEW programme visited homes on a specifically identified area basis, providing households with a number of free “easy measures”. These visits where meant to unlock additional, more significant, retrofit action in the visited households, such as the installation of  loft, cavity or solid wall insulation. Follow up action by households was however fairly limited (only a few per cent) – as has been set out in the following research paper.

It’s clear from a recent MQ that the RE:NEW programme has been adversely impacted by the Government’s disastrous changes to its ECO programme, and the flawed nature of the Green Deal. The latest Government data shows that, despite the RE:NEW programme being in place to stimulate the uptake of energy efficiency in the capital, London still has the second lowest number of ECO measures installed (per 1,000 households) across UK regions.

Provisional number of households in receipt of ECO measures by region, up to 30th June 2015 (DECC spreadsheet)

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Energy and Climate Questions to the Mayor

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Admin

March 2016: This month Mayor’s Question Time – the last in Boris Johnson’s eight year tenure as Mayor – once again included a wide range of questions on energy and climate, which included:

capturing waste heat from London Crossrail stations; the Mayor’s record on climate change; London based generators and Licenced Lite; the ability for Londoners connected to a district heating scheme to complain about poor service performance; anticipated prices of district energy heat tariffs;  announcing the start of the Licence Lite programme; improvements in electricity export sales price for generators through Licence Lite; the number of Excess Winter Deaths amongst Londoners; challenges in promoting gasification technologies at the Olympic Park; the GLA’s Environment Team budget over the last 8 years; targets associated with the Boiler Scrappage Scheme; publication of London district energy schemes heat tariffs; the publication of London Energy Plan studies; guaranteeing that there are no plans for an incineration plan at Old Oak Common; the Mayor’s Boiler Scrappage scheme and fraud; RE:NEW energy efficiency retrofit programme delivery problems; how government energy efficiency programmes have helped Londoners; the amount of  London’s (non transport) energy is supplied through local decentralised energy systems; cuts to the Energy Company Obligation (ECO); the Mayor’s recent meeting with the Secretary of State for Energy; the absence of London Fuel Poverty Strategy; the roll out of smart meters in London
Sutton district heating scheme; embodied carbon; annual progress on decentralised energy growth in London; anticipated savings from the new GLA boiler ‘cashback’ scheme; visits by the Mayor to RE:NEW energy efficiency retrofit projects; TfL future energy costs and the Mayor’s meeting with the National Infrastructure Commission.

Previous months questions to the Mayor can be found here.

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TfL & Low Carbon Generation

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Admin

March 2016: The Mayor has as yet not formally announced the start of his Licence Lite initiative (something that was originally set to be in place in August 2015), the aim of which was to supply low carbon electricity to TfL (see previous posts here).  The Mayor has entered into an agreement with Npower who will provide technical support to the GLA in relation to fulfilling their electricity supply ‘Licence Lite’ conditions. Though there have been delays in getting the programme off the ground, TfL’s new Business Plan whilst not mentioning the Licence Lite programme at all, states that their timetable is to source this electricity this year: “In 2016, we plan to complete a deal to connect directly to 30 megawatts of locally-sourced, low-carbon electricity.”  30MW is three times higher than was suggested by the Mayor back in November 2015.

Though TfL’s electricity consumption is growing as added train services, train stations, and whole new lines like Crossrail come online, the business plan says remarkably little about its plan for securing energy supplies.

A great deal more information on TfL’s future requirement for electricity is set out in a recent report commissioned by GLA Assembly Member Jenny Jones, on proposals around the creation of a London Energy Company.

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London’s floating solar array – video

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Admin

17 March 2016: There has rightly been a lot of press around an innovative floating PV array which is currently being constructed in the west of London near Heathrow. The project has been covered in The Guardian, BBC,  and a helpful video visiting the site has just recently been posted online by EnergyLiveNews.

Details of the solar array follow below:

  • The project is being funded and developed by Lightsource and Ennoviga for Thames Water (see their press release here)  at their Queen Elizabeth II reservoir, near Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey.
  • The array will consist of 23,000 solar panels with a total generating capacity of 6.3MW
  • The electricity will be used to part power Thames Water’s nearby water treatment works
  • It’s not the first floating solar farm in the UK – that’s a United Utilities project in Manchester – but it is the biggest such scheme in Europe.
  • Treehugger usefully mentions that “…the water keeps the solar panels cool, which helps the solar panels to perform better and last longer and the water itself benefits from the panels being there. In the case of reservoirs, the panels block out sunlight so it keeps algae growth to a minimum and reduces water evaporation to keep the reservoirs full.”

This project goes to highlight the hugely flexible nature of solar and the huge potential for PV that could exist across the capital across many sites when properly supported.

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Cities and the Future of Technology

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Admin

March 2016: A report has recently been published by President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report recommending ways to make the most of technology and innovation opportunities for cities.

The report considers how the “urban ecosystem can benefit from the integration of a wide array of technologies that have been evolving rapidly, including systems to increase energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, connected and autonomous vehicles, water and wastewater management systems, communications technologies to enhance connectivity, and new ways to do farming and manufacturing.”

Energy systems considered supporting in city environments include: Distributed renewables, Co-generation, District heating and cooling, Low-cost energy storage, Smart-grids, micro-grids, energy-efficient lighting and Advanced HVAC systems.

Four key recommendations are made in the report – the first of which is:

“The Secretary of Commerce, working with the Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Energy, should establish an interagency initiative, the Cities Innovation Technology Investment Initiative (CITII), which will encourage, coordinate, and support efforts to pioneer new models for technology-enhanced cities incorporating measurable goals for inclusion and equity.”

Similar recommendations on coordinating UK government policy action across various departments – especially in relation to supporting the roll out of low carbon energy systems – have been made over the past two years in DECC’s D3 report, the IPPR’s City Energy Report and ERP’s cities report.  Though no such cross-departmental unit has as yet been established, it is interesting to note that DECC are working with a number of the cities involved in the government’s city devolution process, and are referred to in Liverpool’s devolution agreement and Manchester’s Devolution Agreement.

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‘Cleantech City’ in West London

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Admin

15 March 2016: New London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC) report published recommending to the Mayor of London that a business district for new low-carbon industries is given the go ahead at Old Oak and Park Royal. Full details here.

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Islington Council receives £30,000 for energy scheme

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Admin

7 March 2016: “Islington has netted a £30,000 government grant to set the wheels in motion on an innovative energy saving scheme. The funding will be used for a study into how to extend the current district heating network to housing estates situated to the south of Bunhill.” Read the full Islington Gazette story here.

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SoS to CHP

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Admin

7 March 2016: Good to see the Secretary of State for Energy Amber Rudd today visit Islington Council’s Bunhill Combined Heat and Power (CHP) district heating scheme – much more of which can be read about here. The Minister can be seen below being given a tour of the innovative energy centre, sited just off Old Street roundabout, by Islington Council’s Energy Manager, Lucy Padfield.

Bunhill has had lots of visitors since it was opened in 2012 – but – suprisingly the Mayor has not managed to view the project.

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Nine Elms District Heating Progress

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Admin

February 2016:  “SSE Enterprise Utilities has delivered a low carbon multi-utility solution for a new residential and commercial development on the banks of the Thames.
Hundreds of properties at the Riverlight development will be served by an energy centre housing a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit, gas fired boilers and ground source heat pumps. Installation and ownership of the water, gas and electricity networks on site means that SSE Enterprise Utilities is providing a true multi-utility service.” Read full SSE news release here. A case study on the project is available here and video here.

Also just released is news from  district heating provider Vital Energi that they won a contract at Nine Elms Point, which will see them install a CHP energy centre, connecting a  further 645 homes to a heat network at this major regeneration site. “Nine Elms Point is being delivered in partnership with Sainsbury and Barratt London and Vital have won the contract to perform the installation of the main Energy Centre, Chiller Plant Room and Heat Substations, in addition to all the works to residential and commercial properties, including Hydraulic Interface Units, Cooling Interface Units and Heat Meters in a contract worth £8 million.”

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Fuel Cell in the City

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Admin

February 2016: Neil Pennell, Head of Engineering and Design, at Land Securities discusses how the City has embraced the need for efficient design and eco-friendly power generation, highlighting the One New Change development – which uses a ground source heat pump, and 20 New Fenchurch Street (‘walkie talkie’) tower, which utilises a fuel cell. Read Neil’s blog here. Specifications of the fuel cell can be seen here. More on fuel cells in London here.

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Food poverty and fuel poverty go hand in hand

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Admin

26 February 2016: Sarah Chapman  a volunteer and trustee at Wandsworth foodbank writes in the New Statesman on Fuel Poverty Awareness Day that “It’s no surprise that food poverty and fuel poverty are close friends; two spokes in the wheel of wider deprivation, or adjacent seats on the rollercoaster that’s life on a low/no income. We see this every day at our foodbank centres across Wandsworth. If you haven’t got money for food, you’re unlikely to have enough to “burn on gas”, as one guest, a security guard, told me.” Read the full article here. Full information on Fuel Poverty Awareness Day is available on National Energy Action’s website.

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