Bob`s Blog - renewable energy and green issues

May 2011

I was delighted to despatch Matt from marketing and Ewan from the hydro business to the hydropower station at Nenthead this month to give a little guided tour of our turbine house to the local primary school.

The guys went with some trepidation. I gather that they were more nervous about talking to the kids than they are giving presentations to the senior management at LoCO2 Energy!

However, feedback from the school would suggest the day was a resounding success. It's important for these children to connect with their local industry and to understand where their electricity comes from. It's even more important to put what they have learnt about renewable energy in the classroom into context at a hydropower turbine.

An unforeseen benefit was the indication from the teaching staff at Nenthead Primary that the talks and hands-on experiments had really connected with some of the harder-to-reach kids. We hadn't set out to advertise careers in renewables or engineering but, on reflection, it is this generation of future engineers and renewable developers who will have to tackle our looming energy crisis head on. And who knows? Perhaps one day an ex-Nenthead pupil engineer might look back to a wet and windy afternoon at a turbine house on the moor.

May 2011

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne put the Energy Bill before parliament for its second reading this month.

Many of us, particularly living in urban areas, will welcome the Bill's requirement for landlords to undertake energy efficiency improvement measures at the request of the tenants.

Having seen the rental accommodation thurst on my children whilst they were at university, I have seen first-hand some terribly energy efficient rental housing stock that leaks heat, and therefore money, through walls, under doors and around windows.

By giving landlords access to funds to pay for works upfront and attaching the repayment costs to tenant electricity bills, the Energy Bill should enable sweeping changes to be made to Britain’s out-of-date property sector. Such a proposal is likely to have an effect on those in urban rented dwellings, who are more likely to have lower incomes and may even be fuel poor.

The Energy Bill has the potential to help us to live greener lives with reduced energy bills. LoCO2 Energy couldn't agree with the principles more.

January 2011

It’s been nearly a year since the Feed-in Tariff Scheme launched.

In that time, we have already seen more than 15,000 installations going up (Ofgem November 2010) with more than £2.5 million paid out from the Levelisation Fund.

Total installed capacity of new renewable energy microgeneration stood at 44MW even as early as September. Whilst small in the grand scheme of things (around 15% of the installed capacity of the new Thanet offshore windfarm), it’s still an impressive take-up over just five months.

In this light, we’re happy to see FITs succeeding in the stated aim to increase microgeneration. We’re also glad to administer the FIT payments for 180 microgenerators and we’re keen to take on many more.

Inevitably FITs has raised questions. There is an understandable emphasis on solar PV, which makes up around 60% of all installations. Obviously, more people have access to the sun than those with unobstructed wind-flow for turbines and suitable watercourses for micro-hydro.

Whilst PV is open to most and is relatively cheap to install, it’s still intermittent and difficult to predict.

In contrast to PV, it would seem that renewable energy from anaerobic digestion has been given short shrift. AD is not a technology many of us can aspire to: it’s expensive, requires space and needs a steady supply of organic waste to put into it.

Nonetheless, British farmers in particular have unparalleled access to the waste and land needed to make AD work and comparatively little support to realise it. A retrofit PV system of 4kW or below will command a FIT payment of 41.3p compared to a measly 9p for an AD plant over 500kW. The lower rate AD FIT payment per kilowatt is almost not worth the hassle – especially given the large cash injection required to build an AD project.

This seems to be vindicated by a recent DECC statement confirming that only two AD facilities were registered for FITs between April 2010 and January 2011.

So, although the stated aim of the FIT scheme was to encourage microgeneration, it seems to have left behind our farming community and spurned a reliable and efficient form of energy recycling.