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Decentralised Energy
Cities and the Future of Technology
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.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Energy Efficiency, Library, News, Renewable Energy
Tagged Cities
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Islington Council receives £30,000 for energy scheme
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.
Nine Elms District Heating Progress
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.”
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News
Tagged CHP, Community Heating, heatpumps, Housing, Wandsworth
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Fuel Cell in the City
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.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News, Renewable Energy
Tagged City of London, Fuel Cells
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Councils should use bonds to fund green infrastructure projects
28 February 2016: The Independent reports on a further supporter for the use of Green Bonds to help fund green infrastructure.“Councils should use bonds to fund much needed green infrastructure projects such as renewable energy and flood defences, according to the Lord Mayor of London.” Two quick things to note here: first, the Lord Mayor of London is not the Mayor of London – but Leader of the Corporation of the City of London (one of London’s 33 boroughs) – a one year post largely undertaking ceremonial and social duties. Secondly, The Independent is actually quoting a former Lord Mayor – Sir Roger Gifford was appointed that post in 2012-13. The latest incumbent can seen here.
The Independent continues: “Sir Roger Gifford said there was tremendous scope for the country to follow the lead of the US and Swede, where municipalities have raised billions of pounds for green projects by selling bonds to the public. ..The city of Gothenburg launched its own green bond for a project and were flooded with calls from local people wanting to get involved,” said Sir Roger, an experienced financier who heads the UK division of Sweden’s SEB Bank, which managed the Gothenburg green bond. “I don’t see why that shouldn’t happen in Leeds, or Bradford, or wherever.” Gothenburg’s two green bonds have helped fund a number of projects across the city including water, biogas, district heating, and electric vehicle infrastructure.
“Sir Roger added: “There is great potential for the UK to follow the Scandinavian or North America models. Mostly obviously for wind, but also for wave, solar and biofuel power – all those forms of renewable energy are perfect for this kind of climate-friendly financing. Waste management, water management, better water grids, better electricity grids, sustainable transport, sustainable housing – all of them are also excellent, as is air-pollution prevention. His comments came as Swindon became the first council in the UK to issue a solar bond, a renewable energy bond, or a bond of any type to the public for more than a century.”“
Interestingly Sir Roger is also chairman of the recently launched Green Finance Initiative, launched on 16 January of this year “which aims to make London the world leader in green finance” – see full City of London press release here.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News, Renewable Energy
Tagged City of London, Finance, London Councils
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New GLA DE support programme announced
February 2016: The Greater London Authority (GLA) has asked me to post the following online: “a new opportunity for interested contractors to be part of a new framework on Decentralised Energy (DE). The Mayor of London has set a target to meet 25% of London’s energy supply from DE by 2025. The DE Capacity Study (GLA, 2011) confirmed this target as being achievable based on both renewable and low carbon energy sources and that it represented an £8 billion investment opportunity.
The development of DE projects through the various phases to market requires significant resource and a diverse set of skills, knowledge and expertise. These elements combined with the risk profile of the project development phase act as real barriers for both public and private sector organisations.
Since 2011 the GLA has been supporting others to identify and implement DE projects through various programmes. Energy for London will be delivered by the GLA and will procure and direct technical, commercial, financial and other advisory and support services to help others develop, procure and bring into operation larger-scale DE schemes that deliver significant CO2 reductions at market-competitive prices.
Please take a look at the Prior Information Notice, which has just been issued and is available here.” Hmm… – the GLA have decided to call this initiative Energy for London…
London Energy Plan Scenarios and energy infrastructure map
23 February 2016: The GLA launched the first outputs from their forthcoming London Energy Plan (LEP) at an event held at the The Crystal. The purpose of the LEP is to support the development of the London Infrastructure Plan by evaluating London’s future energy needs to 2050, as a result of a rapidly increasing population (approximately 100,000 people a year) and the predicted increase in energy demand as a result of this growth. Further background to the London Energy Plan can be seen on the following presentations here and here.
As part of this work, the GLA have built on previous work in establishing a London Heat Map, to develop the first spatial mapping of London’s energy demand, supply and infrastructure. The interactive map allows different scenarios for energy supply and demand across London in 2015, 2025 and 2050 to be explored (in that, it is similar to DECC’s 2050 Energy Calculator). The London Energy Plan map can be accessed here.
The London Energy Plan looks at four scenarios for the city’s energy infrastructure to 2050:
• High demand, centralised supply
• Mid demand, mixed supply
• Low demand, decentralised supply
• Low demand, centralised supply.
An accompanying Scenarios to 2050 narrative document (direct download here) provides the detail and context to the assumptions made across these scenarios. Two key messages that came out of the event was that for London to achieve its longer term energy and carbon goals, there was an urgent need to start planning and to act now. Additionally, the highest amount of effort in terms of energy and emissions reductions needed to be achieved over the next decade – something that an incoming Mayor in May 2016 will need to address.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News, Renewable Energy
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District heating as heterotopia
27 January 2016: “District heating as heterotopia: Tracing the social contract through domestic energy infrastructure in Pimlico, London” – new research paper published in the latest issue of the journal Economic Anthropology (PDF here). A presentation on the paper can be seen here.
Arriving soon… heat from tube line piped straight to your home through £6m energy scheme
8 January 2016: The Islington Tribune reports that “Building work on a groundbreaking £6.2million energy scheme which will see waste heat from the Northern tube line piped into homes will start this month. As first revealed in the Tribune last year, the project – the first of its kind in Europe – will harness heat from the underground and help keep energy bills in 500 council homes on the King Square estate in Finsbury up to 10 per cent cheaper.”
“This month, work will start on a new, four-storey energy centre at the junction of Moreland Street and City Road, on the east side of Kestrel House, as the Town Hall extends the Bunhill heating pipe network to capture heat from a tube line ventilation shaft. The underground provides access to natural heat stored within the ground. Both the trains and the nearby electrical sub-station produce waste heat, which will be captured and piped to the combined heat-and-power unit in Central Street.”
Read full story here.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, News, Renewable Energy
Tagged Community Heating, Islington, Transport
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District Heating cost comparator tool
15 December 2015: Useful response to the following PQ on district heating – especially in relation to work to launch an online heat ‘comparator tool’
Lord Black of Brentwood: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made any assessment of the cost of energy bills to people served by District Heating Networks.
Answered by: Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth: 15 December 2015
In March 2015 DECC published a report by AECOM titled ‘An Assessment of the Costs, Performance, and Characteristics of UK Heat Networks’. The report included a review of the prices charged to final customers by a representative sample of heat networks (7 in total). The average heat price was found to be 6.43p/kWh but with a wide range of 4.64 to 9.88 p/kWh reflecting differences in network design, construction, commissioning and operation. On average this is less than the modelled cost of gas central heating in flats and terraced houses when boiler ownership costs are included (7.22 to 10.24p/kWh).
The Government is aware that costs to the consumer can vary and achieving cost savings is dependent on the quality of the individual network. DECC has supported industry development of a technical code of practice for heat networks, and worked closely with industry and consumer groups on the development of Heat Trust, an independent consumer protection scheme that launched in November 2015. There are also plans to launch an on-line cost comparator tool in 2016 to allow a consumer to assess their charges against gas central heating. This greater transparency of heat charges is complemented by the billing information requirements in the Heat Network (Metering and Billing) Regulations 2014.
TfL CO2 emissions increase
November 2015: Transport for London latest ‘Health, Safety and Environment’ report has been recently posted online – available to download here (direct link here).
An important issue in relation to carbon emissions raised in the report, is London Underground’s reliance on grid supplied electricity:
“For electricity, we calculate the total CO2 emissions generated by multiplying the amount of energy we use by the Government’s annual emissions factor. This measures how much CO2 was emitted during the energy generation process, for example by power stations. It depends directly on the grid mix, eg the amount and type of fuel (coal or renewable energy) that was used to generate the national grid electricity in that year. Figure 9 shows that there was a 10 per cent rise in the carbon intensity of the grid mix in 2014/15. This means that our electricity-based CO2 emissions results are indicating a similar level of increase. To show the underlying trend of the change in energy use, rather than the change affected by the energy source, over which we largely have no control, we are for the first time also reporting our total energy consumption figures as kilowatt hours.”
No mention is made in the report of TfL’s activities to increase the amount of renewable electricity it generates or – curiously – efforts being made by GLA to help source local, decentralised electricity supplies for TfL through their Licence Lite programme.
Posted in Decentralised Energy, Library, News
Tagged Library, licence lite, Transport
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Energy & Climate Change Questions to the Mayor
October 2015: This month the Mayor has been asked questions in relation to: the number of London projects awarded funding from government’s Urban Community Energy Fund (UCEF); minutes of the London Plan Energy Advisory Group meetings; helping reduce energy bills for Londoners who have electric heating; GLA loan to Tempus Energy; the impact of the closure of the Green Deal; minimum energy efficiency standards on London’s Private Rented Sector; support for the Governor of the Bank of England’s recent comments on carbon disclosure (and again) ; the FIT consultation and it’s impact on London’s solar industry (and again here); suppliers on the Mayor’s new RE:NEW energy efficiency retrofit framework; London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA) investment in the fossil fuel sector; projected returns from investments made by the London Energy Efficiency Fund (LEEF); planning approval of the Beddington incinerator; a health impact assessment for Beddington incinerator; London Plan requirements for borough planning carbon offset funds; London business risk and financial exposure to a ‘carbon bubble‘; climate sceptic views; Greenwich Power Station update; LED lighting on the Great West Road; production of BioSNG in London; tackling fuel poverty; the rollout of smart meters in London; supporting London businesses resilience to climate change; and an update to the License Lite process.
Previous months questions to the Mayor can be found here.