News

New energy policies set out in Mayor’s planning rules

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Admin

15 January 2014: The Mayor today published proposed revisions to London’s strategic planning framework, the 2011 London Plan. Amongst the series of new policies put forward in the ‘Draft FALP’ (the Further Alterations to the London Plan) are two new proposals on energy – as set out in Chapter 5 ‘London’s Response to Climate Change‘. [to be clear- the blue text in the FALP are the proposed changes to the main 2011 London Plan. It is this text that is being consulted upon].

The first is interesting, and innovative, and relates to the Mayor wanting to see the use of demand side management technologies in new developments. This broadly relates to the incorporation of building energy management monitoring systems, smart meters and smart controls.

5.22a Demand side management is a further way developments can minimise their carbon dioxide emissions as well as minimise the need for additional generating and distribution infrastructure. Demand side management enables non-essential equipment to be turned off or to operate at a lower capacity to respond to the wider availability of energy in the network – that is, the wider energy demand and generation across the network. Developments are encouraged to include infrastructure to enable demand side management.

This is more of a ‘desire’ from the Mayor. The main new requirement in the FALP is however principally aimed at local authorities, in a whole new policy in the London Plan– 5.4a – on ‘Electricity and Gas supply‘. This is prefaced earlier on in the chapter with a new para 5.9a stating that “long term vision for London’s energy infrastructure is a resilient electricity network“.

Policy 5.4a  states that the “Mayor will work with the relevant energy companies, Ofgem the regulator, national Government, the boroughs, developers, business representatives and others to promote strategic investment in electricity and gas infrastructure where and when it is required to accommodate the anticipated levels of growth in London”

and goes on to state that:

“Boroughs should work with the relevant energy companies to establish the future gas and electricity infrastructure needs arising from the development of their area and address them in their local plans. Boroughs should cooperate across boundaries (including outside Greater London where appropriate) to identify and address potential capacity shortfalls in the wider energy network serving their area. Where land is required for infrastructure, boroughs should allocate suitable sites.”

This is a new initiative within the Mayor’s planning framework for London, and has clearly been influenced as a result of discussions between the Mayor and  London’s electricity distribution company, UK Power Networks, through the Mayor’s High Level Electricity Working group. It will be interesting to see local authorities response to this proposed policy in their submissions to the FALP consultation.

Similar, but less detailed requirements are set out in terms of supporting London’s gas supply network (5.31F to 5.31H), which is distributed in London by two companies – National Grid and Southern Gas Networks.

The public consultation runs from 15 January to 10 April 2014

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London Overground Energy Gardens Network

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: Recently appointed as one of the Mayor’s ‘London Leaders’, hear about Agamemnon Otero’s fascinating project to create an “EnergyGarden Network at stations on the Overground Rail lines with solar panels and vegetable gardens will address food and energy inequality in communities“.

 

Agamemnon is also CEO of Repowering London.

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C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group Mayors’ Summit

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: The C40 Cities initiative is to hold its high-level biennial summit in Johannesburg next month – February 4th-6th. The theme of the event is ‘Towards resilient and liveable Megacities– demonstrating action, impact and opportunity” and details of the event can be found on the conference website here. The Mayor of London will not be attending, but it has been announced that the Mayor’s Energy & Environment advisor, Matthew Pencharz, will be present on the Mayor’s behalf at the conference.

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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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Former London advisor appointed as Directior of C40 Cities

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: The C40 Cities climate network announced in a blog post just before Christmas that it had appointed Mark Watts as its new Executive Director. Mr Watts was previously Ken Livingstone’s energy and environment advisor, leading in the development of a number of key London climate mitigation and adaptation programmes, including London’s first Energy Strategy in 2004 and the 2006 London Climate Change Action Plan.

Cities Today provides a profile, relating that “Watts’ ties with C40 go back to the foundation of the organisation as he was the officer in London’s City Hall tasked by then Mayor Ken Livingstone to build a new network of major cities. The C20, as it was at the time of its launch in 2005, grew out of conversations London was having with cities such as Stockholm, San Francisco and Toronto about forming a strategy on climate change.”

Mark will be joining the Boris Johnson’s current energy advisor, Matthew Pencharz, at the C40 Cities Summit, to take place in Johannesburg in a few weeks time.

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‘UK energy bills lower than much of EU’

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Admin

January 2014: A recent FT article highlighting an issue lost in the recent

” A typical household’s annual electricity bill in Berlin, Copenhagen or Dublin this year was at least 34 per cent higher than one in London, according to the Finnish energy consultancy VaasaETT, which has done monthly EU household energy comparisons for the past four years that show UK bills are regularly among the lowest.”

” Parisians’ electricity bills were 3 per cent lower in 2013, but they typically paid 10 per cent more for gas than Londoners. In Rome, gas bills were 34 per cent above those in London, while in Copenhagen they were 28 per cent higher.”

“Compared with the EU-wide average, moreover, household electricity and gas prices have been lower in Britain every year since 2007, figures from Eurostat, the EU statistics body, show.”

It’s just a pity London homes are so energy inefficient!

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Energy & Climate Questions to the Mayor

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Admin

December 2013: This month the Mayor has been asked questions in relation to:

a debate on how the Mayor will look to address the number of excess winter deaths in London;  the impact on London as a result of the Government’s redefinition of fuel poverty; the Mayor’s plans to help tackle fuel poverty (MQs referred to in this answer can be seen here 4251 and 3836); the long terms impacts of climate change;  RE:NEW targets to 2015; the Mayor’s view on the recent ‘Green Crap‘ debate;  the level of increase in London domestic energy bills over the past three years; funding to improve energy inefficient damp London housing;  windfall tax on energy suppliers (see following for link to answer referenced);  the energy costs to Londoners as a result of gas fracking;  Canary Wharf waste heat offtake; details of the recent £5.6m DECC funding to tackle fuel poverty in London; promoting low cost low carbon energy supplies in London (also see the following MQ 4254);  the impact to London as a result of the recent changes to ECO; supporting community-led energy projects such as Brixton Energy; the Mayor’s Low Carbon Entrepreneur competition;  opportunities for the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA) to invest in low carbon projects;  thes costs of nuclear power (read Liberum Capital note referred to in question here);  London’s top 500 energy-consuming buildings;  Nuclear Power versus decentralised energy; the Mayor’s support for fracking and nuclear power; the Mayor’s ambition – as set out in his recent draft Housing Strategy to retrofit London’s “entire stock for improved energy performance by 2020″; the late publication of the RE:NEW evaluation report;  the Mayor’s energy advisor visit to heat pump system at One New Change; the Mayor’s energy advisor visit to the Barkantine CHP system; the Mayor’s work with the Better Buildings Partnership; the Mayor’s energy advisor’s work with the C40; the Mayor’s energy advisor visit to Islington’s Bunhill CHP scheme;  the Mayor’s energy advisor visit to the Olympic site CHP system; recent events the Mayor’s energy and environment advisor has spoken at; the Mayor’s view on Labour’s proposals for an energy price freeze; future funding for the RE:NEW support team; the Mayor’s comments on wind power; RE:NEW housing retrofit targets; the award-winning Bunhill CHP; the number of fuel poor households to be delivered by RE:NEW; London’s resilience to a nuclear power station radiation leak; fuel poverty advice given to callers to the Mayor’s Know Your Rights helpline; the impact on solid wall insulation as a result of changes to the ECO; tower block residents assisted under the RE:NEW programme;

Previous months questions to the Mayor can be found here.

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London Home Energy Efficiency programme “significantly delayed”

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Admin

December 2013: An oral evidence session between officials and the London Assembly Budget & Performance Committee (see earlier post for details) highlighted the slow progress of the Mayor’s domestic energy efficiency retrofit programme RE:NEW. A new paper (06a(v)) presented to the 18th December meeting of the London Assembly Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee provides some data helping illustrate the extent of the shortfall.

The current forecast for 13/14 (right hand chart) shows that RE:NEW is predicted to just miss the project target – however, the performance level to date indicated shows that even this reduced level of delivery is still some way off.  The oral evidence session (referred to above) in fact suggests that only 3% of the 13/14 target has as yet been achieved (996 tonnes of CO2 compared to a target of 29,416 – earlier post). Paper 06a(v) provides some explanation for the slow progress:

  • Delivery  of  the  RE:NEW  Phase  II  carbon targets  is  significantly  delayed  and  contractors  will  miss  their  obligations.   This  is  largely  due  to  delays  in  availability  of  ECO  (government  subsidy). Delivery  of  the  carbon  savings  from  the  interim  Support  Team  has  exceeded  targets  for  quarter  two
  • Performance  payments  have  been  withheld  from  contractors  and  the  funding  is  being  reallocated  to  the  RE:NEW  Support  Team  in  order  to  reduce  the  shortfall  in  performance. However, this  is not sufficient  to  completely  mitigate  the  lower  savings  from  RE:NEW Phase  II  and  this,  combined  with  a  delay  in  confirmation  from  the  European  Investment  Bank  for  ELENA  funding  prior  to  commencing  procurement  of  the  full  RE:NEW  Support  Team,  means  its  is  forecast  75  per cent  of  2013/14  carbon  targets  will  be  achieved.
  • The  targets  for  future  years  have  been  reviewed  and  updated  in  light  of  the  above  and  as  planned.   They  have  been  reduced  for  2014/15  and  2015/16,  but  an  additional  year  of  delivery  (2016/17)  has  been  added,  which  leads  to  an  increase  in  carbon  savings  overall – albeit  over  a  longer  period.

The paper goes on to report latest CO2 saving estimates of two further Mayor’s climate change projects – RE:FIT (the public sector building retrofit project) and the London decentralised energy programme. The latter states that “Significant progress has been made on several projects, particularly with regards the Lea Valley Heat Network, Lakeside Energy from Waste, Greenwich Power Station and the Kew Gardens Decentralised Energy scheme.“

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Huge budget cuts planned to Mayor’s environment programme?

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Admin

20 December 2013: The Mayor today published for consultation his budget for the GLA group for 2014-15 (press release).
The budget document states that a “new look GLA business plan has been published which includes a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) covering all main Mayoral policy and programme activities to be delivered by the GLA.” It’s welcome to see that amongst the 10 “major GLA programmes supporting the Mayor’s ambitions” [p7]  a key deliverable will be “retrofitting more of London’s homes and public workplaces, saving carbon and cutting bills” – referring to the RE:NEW and RE:FIT programmes respectively.

Page 14 of the document also states that:
“The Mayor is continuing to work towards improving London’s environment.
Energy supply and master planning is key to delivering sustainable development for London’s economy. Investment will continue through a Decentralised Energy programme to help bring decentralised energy projects to the market.”

At the same time however, it appears from the draft budget that the ‘Development, Enterprise & Environment’ Directorate is facing a massive reduction in its funding from the Mayor. No separate breakdown for the ‘Environment’ section is provided, but the data (table below) indicates that:

  • The draft 2013/14 budget for this Directorate seems to be have massively overestimated  – the current forecast outturn being 25% lower than predicted. It’s not clear however what is contributing to this huge underspend.
  • The level of underspend must have contributed to a significantly reduced future budget for the department – from a forecasted £31.2m just over a year ago, down to £19.9m for the forthcoming year (a 36% reduction)
  • And the 15/16 plan for the ‘Development, Enterprise & Environment’ Directorate is down to just £10.7m – a 66% reduction from the forecasted 13/14 budget
  • The planned reduction in budget for this Directorate far exceeds all others, some of which – like the Mayor’s Office – will remain static over the three year period.

There’s unfortunately to detail whatsoever within the budget document on the specific environment-team spend, or of future funding going to individual programmes. No further information is provided on the KPIs for the 10 ‘key deliverables’  (as mentioned in para 1 above) – however – future RE:NEW and RE:FIT programme targets to 2016 were recently set out in the Mayor’s draft Housing Strategy. Additionally, an interesting exchange on the Mayor’s retrofit programme RE:NEW was recorded in a November 2013 evidence session on the draft budget to the London Assembly Budget & Performance Committee (see page 17 of transcript) – also copied below:

Continue reading…

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An Energy Master Plan for London?

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Admin

December 2013: The Mayor announced last week that he has commissioned work to “create the capital’s first Long Term Infrastructure Investment Plan”, which will make a high level assessment of the full range of infrastructure delivery in the city, looking at how it is managed currently and what could be improved. The scope of the plan will cover public transport, roads, energy, water, sewerage, waste, broadband and green infrastructure

As part of this work, a Call for Evidence has been issued setting out five ‘core questions’ (see link for details), open to all to respond to, with a deadline for submissions of 24 January 2014.

The Mayor’s Infrastructure Group has been leading on the development of the plan, and their December 2013 meeting set out a working paper with some further detail on what the plan will consider, including the consideration of climate change and future energy demands on London. Included in this paper are a number of important proposals including mention of developing a London-wide Energy Master Plan and a GLA-led body delivering Green Infrastructure:

  • “To address these issues, and address the implications of climate change, a range of recommendations are being proposed. All need further explorations in terms of feasibility and value for money, but provide a starting point for determining how London may need to respond to its infrastructure needs. The list of draft proposals to date is attached at Annex A; they include:   Develop an Energy Master Plan for London, based on favoured approach of either continued nationally led centralised provision, or a decentralised model based on local energy production from a range of low and zero carbon energy sources. (Favoured approach to be set out in the Infrastructure Investment Plan for London).
  • Create a GLA-led delivery body to deliver green infrastructure projects to reduce the amount of rainwater entering the drainage system. Potentially to be funded from the water companies and developers.”

Potential  concerns over future stresses to London’s electricity system led to the Mayor writing recently to Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy, and the formation of the Mayor’s High Level Electricity Working Group.

A strategic outlook on London’s future energy needs (both power and heat) is an absolute requirement of any future London infrastructure plan: much of London’s electricity distribution assets are in need of replacement, London’s population is set to grow significantly to 2020 and beyond, and  the the Mayor’s own target for London to source 25% of its energy needs from decentralised energy will require a significant shift to the introduction of low carbon, localised generation capacity being introduced onto London’s electricity network.

The Long Term Infrastructure Investment Plan for London will be produced in two stages – an interim report (inviting comment) in February 2014 and a final report in Summer 2014.

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The Future of Battersea’s disused gas holders

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Admin

December 2013: National Grid news release announcing that “Work to dismantle the gas holders at National Grid’s site in Battersea got under way recently and the local community are being invited to find out how this and future work will play a part in the exciting redevelopment plans for the area.

“The site was once used to produce town gas which was made from coal. However after the discovery of natural gas under the North Sea town gas became obsolete and the gasworks closed. The gasholders however continued to be used for gas storage but now improvements to the gas network and storage methods mean that they are no longer needed. Their removal will help transform the area enabling the site to be redeveloped and much needed housing to be built.”

Some fascinating historical background to the site can be found at www.BatterseaGasholders.com. And here’s a great drawing of one of the Battersea gasometers – part of a series of drawings of London gasometers – by artist Daniel Preece.

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RE:NEW targets set out

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Admin

December 2013: The Mayor’s recently released draft housing strategy states that “The capital also has some of the worst housing conditions in the country, thus prioritising estate based regeneration through improving the quality and energy efficiency of existing homes remains a key priority. To achieve this the Mayor will make available funding to ensure that by 2016 all council landlords will be in a position to independently resolve their Decent Homes backlog, and will support affordable housing providers to retrofit their entire stock for improved energy performance by 2020.”

Section 2.6 of the consultation paper directly addresses ‘Retrofitting and improving energy efficiency’ and provides some useful information on the Mayor’s ambitions for his flagship environmental programme, RE:NEW:

“To increase retrofit numbers under the government’s Energy Company Obligation (ECO) and Green Deal schemes, the RE:NEW programme has put in place measures to assist all large landlords in London to identify works that can be carried out to their stock, procure the works, access finance and manage contractors. This support will continue until at least 2016, maintaining the momentum for the successor ECO arrangements. The GLA is keen to expand retrofit activity on a more strategic area, or even whole borough, basis. The Green Deal also represents an innovative way to finance energy efficiency works which saves money for individual households. The Mayor will continue to promote the opportunities that the Green Deal offers to Londoners across all tenures. As Table 1 shows, the projected rate of delivery in London is therefore expected to increase significantly over the next three years. “

All of this may however change markedly following the Government’s recent announcement that it will scale back the level of support going to insulation through the ECO as well as significantly reduce the level of solid wall insulation (SWI) installations: the boost in support to SWI systems was often quoted by Government as being a huge advantage to the Mayor’s retrofit ambitions in London due to the high prevalence of solid wall homes here.

Further updated details on the RE:NEW programme.

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