SUSTAINABILITY
Energising local communities
Back in August, energy secretary Chris Huhne changed regulations. Local councils can now sell surplus electricity generated back to the national grid and, even though they generate just 0.01% of England’s electricity, this one act has created an unprecedented opportunity to take the sting out of future budget restrictions, meet energy targets, make a genuine environmental difference and quite literally take the power back for local community development schemes
Rob Shaw T Michael King
his is possible thanks to decentralised energy. Centralised
energy, our existing system, involves siting power stations far from urban areas as we can build them. Unfortunately, over 60% of the primary energy inherent in the fuel used at such power stations is simply wasted, released as steam into the atmosphere and our waterways and seas. This is not only a dramatic waste of precious energy resources, but also money. A further 3.5%, an admittedly less dramatic percentage, is lost in transmission along those miles and miles of high voltage cable before it reaches our homes.
The answer to cutting this waste is to decentralise the energy system – to introduce low-
carbon and renewable energy schemes and bring mainstream power generation, in the form of smaller generators using alternative fuels, closer to our towns and cities, where heat as a by-product can be directed, through district heating networks, to heat buildings. Local authorities have been involved in heat projects for some time so already have a degree of experience.
Sceptics claim the payback period is simply too long to be worthwhile. For the moment let’s leave aside the fact that the long-term is what we should be considering environmentally and economically speaking, and look at the money. Local councils believe that they could raise around £100 million per year - money that can be used not just
to pay back initial development costs, but to fund new community projects, support front line service delivery and even bring energy costs down for the consumer.
From 2016, each new home needs to be zero carbon. That means 70% of each building’s energy use needs to be offset onsite. The remainder is likely to be achieved through what are called allowable solutions – developers should effectively be able to buy that remainder in order to offset it against another or related project.
If we assume that residual emissions for a 2016 home will be 1.3 - 2 tonnes of CO² per year and a developer pays £100 per tonne per year for 30 years in a lump sum, then
24 pse
Nov/Dec 10
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