Partnership in action: Stoke-on-Trent For these partnerships to work, private sector companies should start to think more strategically and look to work as trusted energy partners. Local authorities need to become closer to the private sector to plan infrastructure that will allow sustainable city projects to become a reality. Installing technology such as district heating or solar panels is certainly a powerful step in the right direction – but to deliver the most robust solutions it’s vital that businesses and developers create anchor heat loads which will make such projects commercially viable. Forward-thinking cities like Coventry, Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent are ahead of the game and have already started to form public-private low carbon task forces that will allow us to share expertise and build on opportunities.
In its aim to create the UK’s first truly sustainable city, the city council of Stoke-on-Trent has formed a Low Carbon Regeneration Task Force, with E.ON as a founding member, which aims to deliver millions of pounds of investment to the city whilst reducing its carbon footprint and improving the lives of its people.
As part of this project, E.ON is installing PV panels onto 1,000 council homes via its ‘rent-a–roof’ scheme. E.ON installs, operates and maintains the panels free of charge, the council gets an annual rental fee for each roof and tenants receive the electricity generated free of charge, saving up to one third on their annual bills. In return, E.ON takes advantage of the Feed-in Tariff payment over the long term to fund the project.
And we’re also bringing our expertise on a wider scale, investigating the potential for the injection of bio-methane to provide more renewable energy into the gas- grid, air source heat pumps to provide renewable heating and a district heating system to make the most efficient use of the city’s existing infrastructure such as waste-to-energy plans and combined heat and power plants.
Working to support the cities of
tomorrow By working at city level, private organisations like E.ON can make a real impact on providing cleaner and better energy. It gives us the opportunity to work with individuals, businesses and the community to help them to become energy fit, by moderating their energy use, insulating their properties and generating power using renewable technologies. Focusing on key forward thinking cities means we can make a real difference as we can sit alongside public sector task forces to provide expert advice on energy projects – that will put people in command of the energy they use.
We firmly believe that working closely with local authorities, such as Stoke-on-Trent City Council, is key to changing the way people view and use energy and
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achieving our vision of a ‘Sustainable City’. Schemes like this – working on the ground today – will pave the way for the massive energy efficiency drive that the Government promised to “ruthlessly prioritise” in the Comprehensive Spending Review.
Now more and more councils are realising the same benefits and are following this course. We all need to play our part because there is no single measure the Government can take to ensure we keep energy affordable, reliable and low carbon. As more councils start to embrace the idea and look to create their own version of a Sustainable City, the UK will be in a better position to meet the energy and carbon reduction targets we’ve been set.
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