You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'energy' category.
The mighty triumvirate has received royal assent: the climate change bill (excellent), the energy bill (excellent), and the planning bill (frightening) have now become acts. So now the UK is legally bound to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 with interim targets along the way. Within a year we’ll see feed in tariffs for distributed energy up to 5MW. And ironically, the planning bill may be used to railroad through airport expansion and new coal fired power - but let’s ignore that for now.
Til recently, I’d only dealt with the very end of the wood chip supply chain, the part where the chips arrive in a lorry, ready to be tipped into the chip store and burned in the boiler. But in connection with a number of new projects, I’ll be more closely involved in the whole woodchip lifecycle: chipping, drying, storing, delivery etc. And while getting to grips with some practicalities a few interesting quirks have come to light. Maybe not earth-shattering, but interesting just the same so I thought I’d note a couple down here.
First, when you buy wood chip don’t forget you’re paying for water. So if you hold on to that chip for any length of time in the right conditions it will dry further, reducing your tonnage and so increasing your cost per tonne. For example, if you buy a tonne of fresh wood chip at 55% moisture content for £45 and then store it under cover and let it dry out, here’s how the total mass and £/tonne will change as the chip dries to around 25% moisture.
Fig 1 - Total mass and £/t for a tonne of wood chip as it dries
Read the rest of this entry »
Over on the Sustainability Blog, Michael pointed out that, according to the IEA report, the cost of decarbonising the world’s energy supply would be less than has been spent recently in shoring up the world’s economies. For me a slightly more disturbing number is hidden deeper in the IEA report.
$3.6 trillion - the cost of decarbonising all the world’s energy production between 2010 and 2030.
$9.5 trillion - required investment into oil infrastructure in order to meet demands for oil between now and 2030.
So the cost of decarbonising is a fraction of the amount needed in order to shore up oil infrastructure to maintain business as usual. Sure, this is an oversimplification, but at the heart of it is a sad truth.
There have been further amendments to the Energy Bill in the Lords in connection with feed-in-tariffs. The one year implementation deadline is back in. Excellent news as the detail of how FiTs are implemented will almost inevitably be bogged down in long discussions between government and power suppliers - a one year limit should focus minds.
Also, the 50kW limit on capacity of gas CHP has been lifted. This means Read the rest of this entry »
A quick thought on feed in tariffs.
If a value is agreed for micro power generating renewables, what will the impact be on the solar thermal industry? Would this amount to an anti-competetive subsidy for one type of technology over another? And if so, what are the wider implications?
I can see a scenario in super low energy dwellings where the feed-in tariff for PV might result in an electric heating and DHW solution, but without solar thermal as it may have a poorer pay back. This could result in solutions biased towards oversized PV in situations where solar thermal provides a more common sense fit.
Any thoughts?
Away from the fanfare around Ed Miliband’s announcement that a feed in tariff (FiT) is on the way, the Lords have been debating an amendment to the Energy Bill that has the support of Conservatives, Lib Dems, and even some Labour peers.
What’s in the amendment? It says the Secretary of State has one year from the passing of the bill to bring in a feed in tariff. And the qualifying technologies, their maximum capacity, and their level of support are left to the Secretary of State to decide with no specified cap.
Despite wide support, it was clear that the Government wouldn’t officially get behind the bill as it wasn’t their idea. In fact, as recently as June the Government were firmly against a feed in tariff.
Baroness Wilcox, the amendment’s sponsor, has now withdrawn it, but only on the condition that the Government meet specific terms in their own amendment, which they’re expected put forward on 5 November. However, if the Government doesn’t fulfill her demands, she will reintroduce her original amendment. Here are her terms in a nutshell (my comments in italics):
Ed Miliband has just made his first speech to parliament in his role as head of the DECC. In it, he said he’ll accept all of the findings of the Committee on Climate Change and will amend the climate change bill to raise the legally binding cuts from 60% to 80%. He will also amend the bill to include a feed in tariff for “small community-scale renewable energy projects” as well as microgeneration. No indication of what this means in terms of kW’s or, crucially, what level of support they’ll offer.
Excellent news. Also positive is that Greg Clark, the shadow secretary for energy and climate change, was broadly in favour of the announcements. And he criticised big Ed for not including measures for renewable heat. I disagree with him about the “renewable” part, but it’s heartening to hear mainstream politicians getting close to the crux of the issue.
More details here.
Full text and ministerial bumpf here.
If you haven’t checked out Michael Willoughby’s biomass blog, Woodfuel Magazine, you should. It’s an RSS feed well worth subscribing to. Keep it up, Michael!
At a meeting last week, the message from BERR’s side of the table was that the consultation on Zero Carbon (originally planned for summer, then autumn) is now unlikely to come out until 2009. That’s going to give industry at most 6 years to tool up to delivering zero carbon. Given that ministers are long past the point of no return on this, it’s extraordinary that by delaying this consultation they’re making things even harder for themselves and for developers.
Over on Zero Champion, Phil brought up the subject of payback periods, citing some examples from clients: 12 months, or 18 months, or 39 months.
Those periods equate to ridiculously high rates of return! 100%, 67%, and 31%! Are there so many fabulous investments out there that clients can justify hurdle rates like this?
Could it be that clients are being deliberately obstructive? Or maybe they just want to carry on doing things the way they’ve always done them? By demanding short payback periods they ensure they won’t be lured out of their narrow comfort zone. But this approach is completely unjustifiable.
Ignoring the inherent benefits and taking a purely financial view, a client ought to evaluate low carbon technology in the same way they would look at any other potential investment. Let’s assume our client is a developer with a weighted average cost of capital of 12.5%*. That means they should seriously consider investments that will achieve better than this rate of return. Being conservative, let’s bump it up to 15% - a very attractive investment. We’re still talking nearly 7 years before you’ve recouped your money.
There’s an issue of risk, but only with immature technology. CHP, solar thermal, PV, wind, hydro, biomass heating: these are all tried and tested and, given good site data, their performance can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy. Even with something trickier like biomass gasification, you can factor things like increased downtime into your figures and take a pessimistic view when predicting performance. But that doesn’t mean your hurdle rates suddenly leap into the stratosphere.
So it’s disappointing to hear that client’s are requiring payback periods like 12 months or even 39. They’re taking a distorted view of technology and, in the mean time, promoting the impression that low carbon is somehow so shoddy, so flawed, such a special case, that it should only used if it promises a financial miracle.
* For this example, assume of our developer’s capital, 40% is equity and 60% is debt. Assume cost of debt is 7.5% (LIBOR of 5.5% plus another 2%) and cost of equity is 20%. I’ve ignored tax.
There’s a short video on the Building website of Phil Clark and Michael Willoughby discussing biomass. At one point Michael claims “it’s not efficient to transport biomass more than 20 miles.” Holy smokes, where does this fact come from? I took a stab at the numbers and came up with a figure of 3000km (1900 miles) by truck before you lose the carbon benefit. That’s 100 times more than Michael’s figure. Looks like one of us (or possibly both) has got it wrong.
Excellent article, via Bealers, from the Daily Mash.
I’ve been listening to the excellent Radio 4 series, Our Food Our Future, over the past two weeks. In episode one they interview Alan Swinbank, an economist from University of Reading, who argues that following the current spike, food prices will resume their general downward trend.
In support of his argument, he pulls out the increasingly tired chestnuts:
1. Higher prices drive innovation
2. Technology can achieve whatever advances are required in order to support continued growth
3. Don’t worry if we don’t know what the solution is yet: the next technology may be unforeseen
4. Liberalisation of trade will ensure most effective sharing of the resulting benefits
Here the economist is talking about food but he’s using the same arguments you often hear from his brethren about energy, particularly in the context of fossil fuels: the market will fix it. It seems to be the warm fluffy blanket that they wrap themselves up in at night. And you’ve got to admit, it’s a seductive fluffy blanket.
But I’m uneasy about economists’ faith in market magic. It seems inevitable that the worlds of compound growth and finite resources are doomed to collide sooner or later (read: sooner; or even: as we speak). Sure, as limited fossil fuels become even more costly, other technologies will become more attractive. But Adam Smith didn’t reckon on the sticking power of entrenched energy interests.
I think I might convert to Economicism. Do I get to wear a funny hat?
On a project at Fontenergy we’re looking at some small scale gasifiers that claim to have overcome the traditional problems associated with wood gasification. While doing some research I came across this manual from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the US, with detailed instructions of how to convert your car, truck, or tractor to run on wood gas in the event of extended petroleum shortages. The practice of using wood gas in internal combustion engines was very common in Europe during the Second World War (apparently 95% of mobile farm machinery in Denmark ran on wood gas - I love Denmark) and this guide is aimed at preserving that knowledge.
I’m taking a sickie, grabbing the tool box and heading for the garage.
Prompted by a conversation Nick and I were having this morning, it’s worth pointing out that the 28 day rule originally brought in with NETA has been switched off on a trial basis. On the assumption that consumers are now more savvy and able to look out for themselves, it’s now possible to lock yourself into an agreement with an energy supplier without the ability to switch for the term of the contract. Longer contracts and more certainty means that suppliers can potentially offer more attractive terms but of course caveat emptor still applies.
Love them or hate them, liquid biofuels are increasingly being put forward as a renewable fuel for CHP. Currently they’re eligible for ROCs and so appear to be considered renewable by BERR and OFGEM.
But when I spoke to the SAP team at BRE, not only did they confirm that liquid biofuels aren’t considered under SAP, they also said that “because of mounting doubts over the extent of emissions from biofuels”, you have to use the emissions factor for oil when carrying out your SAP calcs. Did they expect the treatment of biofuels to change for the 2010 review of SAP? Adamantly, they did not.
Then I called the BREEAM helpline. They told me that liquid biofuels also aren’t considered under the Code for Sustainable Homes. So no help in scoring points under ENE1 or ENE7.
So liquid biofuel CHP is eligible for ROCs but will do little for your Part L and Code requirements. Without achieving these requirements, the case for biofuel CHP for new buildings is severely undermined. Obviously this situation could change. With CLG on the lookout for ways to meet the 2016 zero carbon homes target, there might be considerable pressure applied in favour of making biofuel renewable under SAP. But for now the official line is that biofuels are not a solution for carbon reduction in new build.
The UKGBC is launching plans for a Code for Sustainable Buildings to “address the confusion arising from the myriad of different green building standards.” Although they’ve used the name, this isn’t the same Code for Sustainable Buildings that we were promised a few years back and that was eventually pared down into the Code for Sustainable Homes. This is an “open-source” UKGBC-managed standard which could then be used in other standards.
Reading between the lines, the UKGBC have just pre-empted a situation in which BREEAM is adopted wholesale as the basis of a future Code for non-residential buildings (a situation like we saw with EcoHomes and the CfSH). It looks to me like they’re looking to usurp BRE’s place as guardian’s of the public interest when it comes to building performance and I suspect the use of the words “open-source” is a stinging reference to BRE’s increasingly mercenary approach. So take that BRE - you’ve just been King-slapped.
Or am I just looking for drama on an otherwise dull Tuesday?
Developers are taking a hard look at their pipelines in an effort to find savings and many projects are grinding to a halt. Redrow, Taylor Wimpey, Bovis, Barratts, Persimmon - each laying off thousands from their workforce. There’s no doubt that the credit crunch is taking a deep bite out of the construction sector. In addition, oil and energy prices are exacerbating the situation, rising continuously for the foreseeable future.
All this comes at a time when the UK is looking to new build projects to help it meet a significant proportion of its carbon and renewable energy targets, some of which are legally binding and carry fiscal penalties for failure.
A Poyry report out today finds that by installing new CHP at just nine industrial sites around the country we could meet the electricity demand of 2/3 of the UK households and reduce gas imports by half. CHP is cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient than nuclear with no toxic legacy. It’s also much much faster to deploy. So shall we?
Yesterday BERR and OFGEM released proposals for changing the way the electricity regulations work with regard to distributed energy generation. This is particularly important because it’s BERR’s first public reaction to the Citiworks ruling by the European Court of Justice two weeks ago.
For a while, I have suspected that the thermal efficiency requirements for Code 6 would almost certainly require MVHR. But I was always dimly aware that I hadn’t actually done the numbers and so couldn’t be sure. Now I am: no MVHR means no Code 6.
Listening to Radio 4 on my phone on the way home I heard the evening news: Gordon Brown, keen to show he’s doing all he can to ease the fuel crisis, has taken two decisive actions.
First he’s met with North Sea oil producers to urge them to pump more petroleum from their fields, which have been in decline since 1999. He apparently managed to persuade these producers to up their output by promising them a tax break (i.e. subsidy), which will make costly enhanced recovery techniques economically viable.
The total additional output is expected to amount to about 50 million barrels, enough to keep the world running for about 13 hours. Given that petroleum is a fungible globally traded commodity (there’s no such thing as local prices as the oil price is entirely determined by global factors), this tiny drop in the bucket won’t do anything to lower the price of fuel here in the UK or anywhere else. And you’ve got to think that if $130 a barrel wasn’t enough to stimulate recovery, maybe that subsidy would be better spent elsewhere. After all, given the record profits posted by oil companies this year, I think we could find one or two other technologies more deserving of a break.
Weird reporting in the Observer today on the IEA’s upcoming study on the narrowing margin between oil demand and oil availability. Two snippets:
The International Energy Agency has ordered an inquiry into whether the world could run out of oil, The Observer has learnt.
Wow, hard hitting stuff from the IEA (and the Observer). I hadn’t realised it was possible that we wouldn’t run out of oil. Finite resource, projected exponential growth in demand. You might have thought it was a no brainer. I appreciate that there are some convincing arguments out there for why peak oil might still be several years off but I hadn’t realised there was anyone out there pushing the view that oil is infinite.
IEA researchers have warned that even if there is enough oil under the ground, which is probable, supply difficulties could emerge because national oil companies and Western multinationals have failed to invest sufficiently…
So the IEA says there is probably enough oil under the ground? Enough for what? To run the world forever? To avoid peak oil in 2012? What?
It’s just odd that the Observer would write in such a vague and useless way about a topic that’s tied for first on the end-of-the-world watch list.
From out of nowhere, twice in one week, there have been indications that a feed in tariff is on the way. First, at Tuesday’s PRASEG (Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group) meeting, BERR and DEFRA both hinted that a feed in tariff would replace the renewables obligation for installations under 50kW. Then on Thursday at Think08, Hillary Benn delivered the same message (thanks to Phil for pointing that out).
So how soon might this happen? Probably not as quick as we’d like as it’s likely to require a change to the RO legislation. But until then hopefully small generators will be able to console themselves with double ROCs.
If you build to Passivhaus standard, there’s no point in putting in a wet heating system. In fact, the key to the economics of Passivhaus design is that a conventional heating system is rendered redundant: you’re supposed to use the resulting savings to help fund the efficiency measures. Instead of a boiler and radiators you might only need a small electric heating coil in your mechanical ventilation system.
Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes is modelled on the Passivhaus standard. As a result, until the Code changes, you’re likely to see more and more developers trying to move towards electric heating systems. You might argue that given the quantities of electricity we’re talking about (15 kWh/m2.yr), even if you source the electricity from the grid, it’s no carbon catastrophe. Unless you consider the bigger picture.
Making new buildings zero carbon is an excellent requirement, but by focusing our efforts (and a hell of a lot of money) on ratcheting down the heat demand from new buildings, we throw away the huge opportunity of using new developments to slash emissions from existing stock. Read the rest of this entry »
At work I’m helping a large housing association upgrade their existing heating networks to save carbon and reduce costs to occupants. There are various steps to take: upgrading boilers, re-insulating distribution pipework, considering CHP, and so on. But the single most effective thing you can do on these schemes is to install heat meters.
Doing some background research, I rang up the very friendly and forthcoming Dick Bradford, the driving force behind the hugely successful biomass community heating schemes in Barnsley, to ask him what effect installing heat meters had had on his schemes. He told me that following the installation of heat meters, heat consumption dropped by 50%. I was gobsmacked.
My first day back in London and I’ve spent the morning schmoozing at a publication launch just off the Mall. Five minutes out of my cattle stall and I’m already moving and shaking. It was an event to publicise the TCPA’s new document, Community Energy: Urban Planning for a Low Carbon Future, and it attracted quite a crowd including MPs Nick Hurd and Keith Hill.
During the presentations and panel discussion, most people in the room seemed to feel that local authorities have the pivotal role to play in the creation of low carbon distributed energy networks. I totally agree, but I think we were missing part of the picture.
I’ve been spending some quality time with spreadsheets and have an update on the way building regs for housing treats CHP. It’s not as simple as I thought here, although the result is similar. The incorrect method I wrote about a few weeks back is still in use, but it’s different from what’s happening in SAP 2005. Here’s a breakdown:
Martin at isite has got in touch to urge us to wear blue on Earth Day (April 20th) to signify opposition to new coal.
We’re with you, Martin. Time to break out the body paint.
Following on from here, I have been chasing BRE & CLG to clarify the situation. The sorry response is that no-one was really aware of the potential implications of this piece of policy. So it’s official, at this point it is not possible to include the power output from communal on-site wind turbines, even where connected via a private wire network.
I have been tasked by Ted King, Head of Building Regs at CLG, to formally write to all stakeholders highlighting the issues so that they can be considered (not necessarily resolved) during the revisions for SAP 2009/10 for the next Part L update. The good news is that this work is already underway to be ready for the consultation process in January 2009. So, no comfort for my client, but perhaps others will be able to avoid this.
For what it’s worth, I also contacted the BWEA to check whether they were aware of the situation, and no they were not but obviously very interested to make sure that their industry is not penalised in this manner in the future.
Today Lord Turner’s panel met for the first time to discuss a concrete strategy for fufilling the UK’s commitment to reducing emissions by 60% by 2050 (and to consider upping the target to 80%). With around a third of UK emissions coming from housing, this sector will inevitably play a key role in their strategy. You might think we could rely on the Code for Sustainable Homes to get us there - after all, if all homes from 2016 are Code level 6 then there will be no net emissions from new housing. But unfortunately new homes are only a small part of the problem.
The graph below illustrates the predicted emissions from the housing sector by age of housing stock for the period 2002 to 2050. It shows that the overwhelming proportion of emissions will continue to come from houses built before 2002. The dotted lines represent the emissions from all housing required to achieve a 60% and 80% reduction in emissions vs 1990 levels. Emissions from each band decreases over time due to demolition.
Figure 1. Carbon emissions from housing sector by age of housing stock, 2002 - 2050
Communal wind turbines are currently of no use when trying to achieve Zero Carbon status for Stamp Duty Exemption. Here’s why… Read the rest of this entry »
Greenpeace has created their version of a model town, stitching together examples from all over the UK. It’s a very cool combination of flash pages with lots of case studies, animations, and videos. Worth a wander.
At first glance, the green credentials of ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) look unquestionable: because you’re harvesting free heat from the ground, you can get up to four times more energy out of the system than you put into it. Sure, it runs on electricity, which is more carbon intensive than gas, but because of this favourable ratio of output-to-input (called the COP for coefficient of performance) the system should still emit less carbon than a gas boiler - in theory.
But the claimed benefits are reliant on incorrect assumptions. A new house will emit about the same carbon using a ground source heat pump as with a new gas boiler. Here’s why:
[update March 20: I've looked further into how SAP treats CHP and written it up here. So while the method described below is being used elsewhere in the industry, the criticism doesn't apply to SAP.]
I’ve written on this topic before but maybe I didn’t succeed in making clear just how far off the mark the standard method is when estimating carbon emissions from CHP. Why does it matter? Here are some reasons:
-
Right now, big developers and the Housing Corp are assuming CHP can get them to level 4 under the Code for Sustainable Homes and this may not be true.
-
These emissions figures can determine whether or not a scheme gets planning permission or passes building regs.
-
The nascent micro-CHP industry (expected to be worth £2billion per year across Europe) is using this flawed method to back up its sustainability claims. Changing from a commonsense approach to the much more forgiving “standard” approach explains why the first Carbon Trust interim report on the micro-CHP field trails was so bleak and the second was so rosy.
There’s a good chance that, if I’m right and the standard approach is flawed, when the CLG and BRE realise their mistake, the rules will change, leaving public and private sector developers and the micro-CHP industry with a very costly mess to clean up. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ll keep this short to ensure that it does get posted, but I suspect that I could rant on this till closing time on Friday night. For a recent renewable energy assessment for a client I finally took the time to review the potential for air source heat pumps to deliver carbon reductions and I don’t like what I found. Read the rest of this entry »
I posted extensively last year about the no off-site renewables issues enforced by the Treasury. There is little to report on this as yet, except that as a direct result of the blogging and discussions with Paul King by myself and Julian Brooks we were invited to join the Green Building Council Task Force to review the issues and report to Government.
Can’t say anything about progress, but it’s exciting stuff and we are pleased to be involved.
If the government backs up Medway Council’s inane decision to allow a new coal fired power station in Kent, I’m going to pack it in. The superfluous runway at Heathrow is bad enough, but new coal? The squabbling we all do over saving a tonne of CO2 here and a tonne of CO2 there - and Gordon Brown is going to give us the first new coal plant in 30 years?
Seriously, I’m going to put my feet up, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe, and join the national guard. Who knows, I might even become the next prime minister.
Much later than planned, but here it is. In summary, micro-CHP saves 5% to 10% of carbon in large inefficient houses but only if you use a flawed methodology and give yourself extra-extra credit for displacing grid electricity. A few of the key findings:
- The trial has demonstrated that the carbon and cost savings from Micro-CHP are generally better for buildings where they can operate for long and consistent heating periods.
- In small commercial applications, the field trial has shown that Micro-CHP systems can provide typical carbon savings of 15% to 20% when installed as the lead boiler in appropriate environments.
- The domestic Micro-CHP systems monitored in the trial have the potential to provide typical carbon savings of 5% to 10% for older, larger houses with high and consistent heat demands (over 20,000kWh/yr).
So since the last report, the Carbon Trust has toed the industry line that the 0.568 figure should be used.
There’s some very interesting output from the boiler field trials in the report as well. In particular, the boilers they’re monitoring are generally performing 4% to 5% below their SEDBUK rating.
Phil Clark and Fulcrum have put together a fantastic list of upcoming proposed policy changes relevant to construction. Though I couldn’t find the attached doc he talks about: Fulcrum’s housing chart - where is it? Phil’s promised to keep the list updated as more information is released.
That’s just saved me a pile of research this morning, Phil. Thanks.
[Update March 20 - while it's true that SAP gives misleadingly high emissions savings for CHP, I got the methodology wrong. See an updated post here. Points 3 and 4 below are still valid.]
The SAP results for dwellings using CHP are badly skewed. This may cause large developers to formulate strategies for meeting the Code for Sustainable Homes which fall well short of the targets.
Doing some research this week, I read the Housing Corporation’s report on the estimated costs of meeting various levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes. It’s an interesting document, but at a certain point I was confused by their claim that you can meet the carbon reductions required by code level 4 (i.e. a 44% reduction in DER relative to TER) just by using gas CHP. In fact, when I looked closer I found that in some cases, they were claiming an emissions reduction of over 50% - an extremely high figure. Something closer to 10 and 15%