New year: new future?
Despite the FITs changes, the green agenda still offers plenty of great opportunities for electrical contractors, as Bill Wright, the ECA’s head of Energy Solutions, explains
C
learly, 2011 was not been a good year for the electrical industry overall, with the economic downturn hitting new construction hard, and greatly reducing the volume of other
work. However, the picture has been much brighter for energy efficiency and renewables. Up to the December Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) deadline, the solar photovoltaic (PV) installation industry has had an incredibly busy time, with customers realising excellent returns on solar PV systems. The latest review of FITs has caused considerable consternation within the sector (see the box panel ‘Update on Feed-in Tariffs’), but there are still many commercial opportunities available in the energy sector – including for renewables.
Energy boost One of the few things that can be virtually guaranteed in future years is higher energy prices. As demand for energy increases in developing countries, there is going to be more competition for the limited energy supplies available, and prices will inevitably rise. The developed countries need to find ways of reducing their dependency on imported energy, and hence the sectors involved in renewable technology, energy efficiency and management are well placed to provide the necessary solutions over the coming decade. In the UK, the government’s target is to reach 15 per cent of energy production from renewable sources by 2020. This equates to around 30 per cent of all electricity being produced from renewable sources – a very considerable challenge.
20 ECA Today January 2012 PV installations are just one part of the renewables
industry. Other renewable energy sources such as wind, Combined Heating and Power (CHP), Anaerobic Digestion (AD – energy from food waste) have all maintained their subsidies and, in the case of AD, they have increased.
Renewable Heat Incentive The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which came into effect at the end of November, will further encourage the use of biomass and heat pumps. This work is well within the capabilities of competent electrical contractors, not least because the production of electricity is a major part of the system. There is a lot of terminology associated with the industry, and the ECA has recently published a guide to ‘carbon jargon’ which can be downloaded free from the ECA website (www.
eca.co.uk). For example, ‘heat pump’ is essentially a technical sounding name for a device that may be like
UK carbon reduction targets
Some of the government targets for the renewable and energy sectors are listed below. The Climate Change Act and Energy Act all bring legally binding targets for energy and carbon emissions reduction. n 15 per cent renewable energy by 2020; n 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050; n Smart meter in every home by 2020 (potentially more than 20 million dwellings); n All new homes zero carbon by 2016; and n All new commercial buildings zero carbon by 2019.
There are additional proposed EU-driven targets that will affect the energy targets in the UK in future.
The current EU target is 20:20:20 – that is, 20 per cent renewables and 20 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, although this may not be reached given the current economic climate.
SHUTTERSTOCK/CIENPIES DESIGN
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