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News
Mayor warms to solar
15 April 2013: The Mayor tweeting from a visit to Dubai: “Fascinating visit to @MasdarCity; a new city entirely powered by solar energy”
Greenwich Peninsula DE network
April 2013: Industry journal Utility Week revealed last week that E.ON is planning to support the development of a district heating development in the Greenwich Peninsula. The brief story states that “The energy company is in talks with the Royal Borough of Greenwich to develop heat networks around the O2 Arena”.
E.ON’s website provides some further detail on their role to date: “Initially E.ON undertook a high level technical model of the Greenwich Peninsula to assess and validate both heat demand and the indicative heat network design. A design audit shortly followed. E.ON is advising the Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration venture on the heat network design and specification provided by other consultancies, ensuring it’s sufficiently robust to be adopted by an ESCo (Energy Services Company).”
The March 2012 Greenwich Heat Mapping Study provides much more information, setting out that the “Greenwich Peninsula cluster focuses on the existing district heating network at the Greenwich Millennium Village and the O2 Stadium site and the proposed district heating network for the Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration Limited (GPRL) site. The new redevelopment site consists of 10,000 new homes and 340,000 square meters of mixed use space.”
The study goes on to say that a wider area heat network could in fact be developed by “engaging with the developers for Heart of East Greenwich, Lovell’s Wharf and Enderby Wharf to gain clarity on progress and potential for linking to wider DE network”.
Greenwich’s Climate Change Strategy from 2011 sets out plans for the wider use of decentralised energy across the borough. Greenwich’s Core Strategy consultation also sets out plans for supporting the development of CHP.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged CHP, Community Heating, Decentralised Energy, Greenwich
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London CRC Performance
April 2013: The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Performance Table was published a few weeks ago and attracted some media attention on who had gone up and down the table (see Guardian article here). The CRC is a complex mechanism and Government has had to return to tweak the policy time and again to simplify it. Along with the performance table, it appears the Chancellor’s view of simplification is, as set out in his Autumn Statement (December 2012), to get rid of the CRC altogether.
“1.127 The CRC’s Performance League Table will be abolished, to simplify the scheme further. A full review of the effectiveness of the CRC will be held in 2016 and the tax will be a high priority for removal when the public finances allow.”
For those new to the CRC, they should be made aware the original plan of the policy was to recycle the funds obtained from participants purchase of carbon permits, into sector-wide energy efficiency funding. The incoming Government however changed plans in 2010 and the Chancellor simply took all the funds into Government. It’s more than likely the Government would like to see the back of the CRC sooner, however, it does bring in close to £1bn to the Exchequer a year and this will increase again, as the 2012 Autumn Budget highlights: “2.88 The forecast allowance price remains unchanged at £12 per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2013-14 and £16 per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2014-15. From 2015-16 onwards, the allowance price will increase in line with the RPI.”
Back to the performance table: how did London do?
Disabled Facilities Grant to fund heating
April 2013: The Department for Communities and Local Government announced last week new funding to help councils fund the adaptations disabled people need to live independently in their own home. The press release states that “Ministers have protected the Disabled Facilities Grant programme for the last 3 years, with a further £185 million expected in next year’s funding“.
Included in eligible types of work for funding are:
- adapting heating or lighting controls to make them easier to use
- improving or providing a suitable heating system
A document setting out the allocation awarded to each local authority is provided here. Looking at London councils , it can be seen a total of £23.5m has gone to the capital – a breakdown of each borough’s funding is provided below:
Decarbonising London’s electricity network
March 2013: An update on progress of the Low Carbon London programme as it moves into the trial phase – the key areas for which are:
- Smart metering (SM) – monitoring residential and commercial electricity use and trialling variable tariff pricing to shift consumption behaviour.
- Small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) – quantify generation output, understand demand and manage techniques for accommodating these connections.
- Electric vehicles (EV) – understand and influence EV charging patterns and manage the impact on the electricity network.
- Distributed energy (DE)/Distributed generation (DG) – active network monitoring (ANM) – quantify generation output, understand how to facilitate and manage DG and how active control can be used by DNOs.
- Demand response (DR) – understand the potential to postpone/defer electricity network reinforcement during peak demand.
Further information on Low Carbon London here.
4MW of PV added in London
March 2013: Ofgem’s new FIT quarterly report provides an update on the take-up of Feed in Tariff eligible technologies across the UK. London (as at 31 December 2012) has a total of 39.38 MW of FIT renewable capacity installed – as with the rest of the country, the vast proportion of this capacity is made up of PV (99% in London). This is an increase of 4.25 MW of capacity over the previous quarter.
Progress remains slow in London which – with the North East – trails all other UK regions by a significant margin. See graph from FIT report below highlighting the number of installations by region.
Previous posts discuss London’s slow performance on FIT take up here.
The Future of Heating in London
March 2013: The Government’s Future of Heating policy paper released yesterday gives prominent coverage to activities underway in London to promote the use of decentralised energy systems through the use of district heating and high efficiency Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems. The paper includes the following:
- A case study of The Shard CHP heat network [p41]
- How Islington Council, the GLA and UK Power Networks are working together on “a proposed extension of the existing Bunhill heat network that will capture and use identified sources of waste heat produced within the area, such as from a nearby electricity sub-station. This project will help London and its boroughs to identify, capture and make use of urban sources of waste heat and play an important part in developing their lower carbon, lower temperature heat networks ofthe future” [p43] Continue reading…
Posted in Library, News
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Getting into Hot Water…
March 2013: Presentation made at the the recent Combined Heat and Power Association (CHPA) district heating conference, by Bob Fiddik, Sustainable Development & Energy Team Leader at Croydon Council, giving some valuable insights into the challenges faced when developing heat networks. The presentation includes:
- Some of the history behind the failure of the SELCHP energy from waste plant to develop the expected district heat network anticipated when it was built – and the recent work now being undertaken to help turn this around
- The unhappy circumstances that led to the stalling of the hugely exciting Elephant & Castle heat network project, and
- An update to the major district heating scheme currently being planned for Croydon.
Slide 14 of the presentation sets out – as challenging as circumstances have been in the past – things are not unfortunately getting easier:
Download ‘Getting into hot water…not always that easy’ here.
Posted in News
Tagged Community Heating, Croydon, Decentralised Energy, SELCHP, Southwark
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Threefold increase in fuel poverty in London over past decade
27 March 2013: A parliamentary question asking about the numbers of fuel poor households in the UK, including for numbers at the regional level, helps provide an indication about the growth in fuel poverty in the capital over the past decade.
Data is only available as yet to 2010 (see PQ link above for references): updated statistics for 2011 and 2012 will be made available in June of this year. London is common with most other areas in observing a threefold increase in the numbers of fuel poor households as a consequence of increasing fuel prices – most notably from 2005/06 onwards. The Government is however currently working on a redefining the definition of fuel poverty and the proposals – as set out out in a consultation paper late last year – are anticipated to have a significant impact in London, as a consequence of housing costs now being taken into consideration (see earlier post here for details).
The Big London Energy Switch
March 2013: The ‘Big London Energy Switch’ collective switching scheme was initiated earlier this year after securing £686,655 in funding from DECC (see earlier post here for full details). Those involved include London Councils, with 18 other boroughs and with the Royal Borough of Kingston as lead. Kingston is also where Secretary of State for Energy, Ed Davey, a longtime support of collective purchasing, is the local MP (see here for further details). The other 17 London boroughs are: Bexley, Brent, Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Merton, Newham, Richmond, Southwark, Sutton and Waltham Forest.
A recent London Councils briefing paper highlights that three other boroughs (Lewisham, Harrow and Tower Hamlets) are now also supporting the scheme but are not in receipt of DECC funding. A Big London Energy Switch website has now been established along with an introductory video to the initiative.
The Scheme is currently procuring a switching provider with support from law firm Pinsent and Masons.
Energy and Climate Questions to the Mayor
March 2013: This month the Mayor has been asked questions in relation to:
the number of applications to the London Energy Efficiency Fund; the Mayor’s correspondence with DECC on the ECO; fuel poverty and health; Details of decentralised energy schemes being supported by the Mayor; visits to Brixton Energy Solar projects; energy efficiency targets in the Mayor’s London Rental Standard; fuel poor families in London – and RE:NEW delivery in the private rented sector; the Mayor’s work to plug the energy gap; progress under the RE:FIT programme in London boroughs; the level of Green Deal activity in London; Is the GLA a Green Deal provider; plans in place to spend the £5,627,342 DECC Green Deal and Fuel Poverty funding to the GLA; 2013/14 funding to the RE:FIT programme; evaluation of the RE:FIT programme;
RE:CONNECT programme budget for 2013/14; Better Building Partneship programme budget for 2013/14/; events attended by the Mayor’s Environment Advisor; Bunhill CHP scheme; attendance at the High Level Electricity Working Group; and participation on environmental issues on the Talk London website.
Previous months questions to the Mayor can be found here.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Energy Efficiency, News, Renewable Energy
Tagged Buildings, Fuel Poverty, Funding, Green Deal, Health, Lambeth, Photovoltaics, RE:CONNECT, RE:FIT, RE:NEW
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Enfield Biomass CHP Update
19 March 2013: Updates from developer Kedco of the biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plant being developed in Enfield (see previous post here for a lot more detail on the scheme).
The Telegraph reports that “The project, which has full planning and environmental permission for the conversion of 60,000 tonnes of waste timber per annum into up to 12MW of electricity and heat, remains on track to reach financial close and start construction in the third quarter of 2013. Chief executive Gerry Madden said: “The company has a clear plan in place for the Enfield Biomass CHP project with the key objective being to reach financial close by Q3 2013.
“Given the flagship nature of the project, which is located in the London area within the M25, the company is pleased to have received numerous enquiries from various parties interested in participating in the project, and we look forward to finalising this shortly.”
Kedco’s website additionally states that: “The company has had discussions with a number of potential large blue chip offtakers for both the electricity and heat which will be generated by the project.”
Further information on a press report here.