Milliband has annouced plans to give 400,000 UK homes a ‘Green Makeover’ by 2015, extending to 7 million homes by 2020.  Milliband outlines his vision for all UK homes to have reduced demand for energy, and as a result, reduced emissions by 2030

 This plan will feed into the governments carbon reduction plans outlined in Climate Change Act 2008 to ensure an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.  Currently, homes account for 27% of the UK’s carbon emissions through heating and power and this refurb can cut emissions from homes by a third! (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment)

 Under the proposals,  Minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Milliband outlined that cavity wall and loft insulation will be available initially for all ‘suitable’ homes. Financial incentives for householders will also be granted for low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, biomass boilers and ground source heat pumps, paid for by a levy on utility companies.   

Although there are no upfront costs to the household, a main incentive alone, over time, these energy saving materials will pay back the investor, through savings gained in reduced heating bills.  In addition, the Renewable Heating Incentive will encourage local community to develop small-scale energy networks to feed into the national grid from their power-generating facilities.  This can benefit the household by generating electricity for local consumption, whilst profiting from sales to the national grid for excess electricity production; a win-win situation.

 The ’Great British Refurb’ has been welcomed by most organisations, including Nathan Argent, head of energy solutions at Greenpeace UK who comments:

“A programme to upgrade the housing stock alone would require £3.5-£6.5bn per year until 2050.  Tackling energy efficiency is the fastest way to cut emissions, boost our energy security, revitalise the economy and create tens of thousands of jobs. And, obviously, this will cut household bills too. But this plan needs much more investment right now. The government needs to put their wallet where their mouth is.” (Source: www.guardian.co.uk/environment) 

Paul King, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) also comments:

“As Lord Stern said yesterday” energy efficiency in homes and buildings should be part of a green stimulus. Financial incentives are needed to encourage major green refurbishments – the precedent has already been set with stamp duty rebates for zero-carbon homes”.  (Source: www.guardian.co.uk/environment) 

 As with every consultation and new product launched by the government, there are cynics of the scheme, including comments made by the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) and the Energy Saving Trust (EST), accusing the government for not tackling the carbon issues directly, boldly or soon enough. 

This stimulates the question if Milliband is targeting the correct sector for stimulating a green refurb change?  Since direct global carbon emissions from the UK’s 100 largest companies amounted to 480 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent – about 73% of the UK total, as revealed in a report ‘The Carbon 100‘ published by Henderson Global Investors.  The question that remains is, will the impact of the green refurb simply be enough to reduce CO2?  (http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=10094)

After my previous post about Blue-NG’s plans to harness geopressure technology from the UK gas pipeline to generate renewable electricity, raised considerable interest, I have looked into some of the points of discussion and felt a further blog was necessary.

An architect's drawing of the planned site at Beckton, East London

The first of the eight schemes will install a highly efficient power station at a pressure reduction station (PRS) in Beckton, East London. It will utilize innovative Combined Heat and intelligent Power (CHiP) technology, with an expected energy potential of 19.5MWe – enough to power 50,000 homes. Click here to see the BBC’s report on this scheme.

Blue-NG has confirmed that there is no use of geopressure technology to generate ‘clean’ energy as detailed in the previous post, and other reports of the project. Blue-NG confirmed that despite early consideration of geo-pressure options for 2OC‘s agreement with the National Grid, this project is now only concerned with CHiP technology to capture heat, and not pressure.  Whilst 2OC campaigned for geopressure to be recognized in the Renewables Obligation, this will only benefit geopressure projects they may develop later; however this scheme will still benefit from ROCS for the use of fuel and heat.

Nevertheless, Blue-NG claim that the CHiP (click here for diagram) is the world’s most efficient generator, reaching a maximum efficiency of 96% and therefore boasts a number of environmental benefits.

It will produce electricity in three ways:

1.     A diesel engine will produce electricity from burning liquid biomass – locally grown and sustainable rapeseed oil sourced from within 50 miles of London. This will replace the gas boilers currently used to pre-heat the gas at PRSs to avoid unacceptable temperature drops (which may freeze pipes and valves) during the normal gas pressure reduction process.

2.     Surplus heat will be captured and used for local district heating

3.     The remaining surplus heat will be used to heat the natural gas in the National Grid’s PRS as part of its normal process operation, to ensure pipes and valves do not freeze as the pressure of the gas is reduced. 

Despite support from Greenpeace, the project has attracted criticism from some environmental organizations, including Biofuels Watch, who remain concerned about the health and sustainability issues relating to production of electricity from biofuels. They claim that the use of biofuels provokes a number of issues, including the displacement of food, human and animals, as well as leading to deforestation in developing countries from which they are imported.

However, Blue-NG highlight that the Section 106 agreement – a condition applied to the project by Newham council, requires them to source their fuel from sustainable sources, and prove that they have not displaced crops. This would allow the council to monitor the fuels used by the plant at any time, although some argue that this may still be difficult to police.

Richard Lyddon, from Blue-NG added that, the company’s sustainable procurement policy, developed with support from Greenpeace, commits them to sourcing rapeseed oil, (which will be processed) from credited farmers within 50 miles of the site.

Rapeseed is currently used as a break crop by farmers, and as a result of the EU abandoning the ‘set-aside’ policy for farmers, 10,000 hectares of land is expected to become available for growing rapeseed in the 50 mile radius from which Blue-NG will be procuring these crops. Lyddon confirmed that the project would only use rapeseed oil, and not palm oil, which was mentioned in an original tender. However, objectors of the project remain skeptical about whether the plan to source such a level of biofuels locally is realistic, and recognize the additional environmental costs of shipping the fuel to site.

Whilst Blue-NG plan to contribute to climate change mitigation through ongoing implementation of their CHiP technology after the 8 planned schemes and the government continues to incentivise biofuels through the Renewables Obligation (RO), many environmental organizations, including Biofuels Watch, remain unconvinced and argue that biofuels are simply unsustainable.

The concept of “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) links two of the most critical factors of modern society – transport and electric power; both of which will need to undergo technological transitions to more renewable sources in order to achieve oil independence, increase energy security (reducing risk of shocks), and improvements in our natural environment in response to global climate change.

(Source: www.global-greenhouse-warming.com)

Electric vehicles (EVs), such as plug-in hybrid or battery electric cars, would use and also potentially supply power to the national grid, as grid-connected batteries would charge during low-demand hours and discharge when power is needed. The V2G concept could assist the transportation system by reducing petroleum use, strengthening the economy, enhancing national security, reducing strain on petroleum infrastructure, and improving the natural environment.

In order to operate in a V2G configuration there are 3 key components, namely,

 A power connection to the electricity grid

1.     A power connection to the electricity grid

2.     A communication device to allows the grid operators access to the vehicle’s battery, and

3.     Precision metering on board the vehicle to track energy flows

This two-way communication between the national grid and the vehicle presents an opportunity for more effective energy and resource management, and allows owners of EVs to earn money by selling power back to the grid during peak demand periods. EVs have the opportunity to become not only vehicles, but mobile, self-contained resources that can manage power flow and displace the need for electric utility infrastructure. V2G vehicles can reduce the lifetime cost of EVs, making them more attractive, and if V2G increases the market share of EVs, the benefits of EV use also increase. Whilst the benefits of EVs are clear, particularly in terms of running costs as electricity remains cheaper than petroleum (for equivalent distances travelled), the prospect of selling power back to the national grid could generate an additional revenue stream for owners of these vehicles in a V2G system. The batteries in electric vehicles could store electricity produced by wind turbines and other renewable sources, for example, and provide the power back to the grid when needed.

The concept may also spur efficiency gains in the electricity industry. Electricity infrastructure has been designed to meet the highest expected demand for electricity, which means that during the hours of off-peak use, enough energy is produced (and could be utilised to) power the nation’s EVs, without burdening the national grid too much to increase supply, as long as charging is targeted at off-peak times through a tariff system.

As a result, the V2G concept could provide a new demand and therefore extra revenues for electricity companies for a similar level of production. This will be especially the case at night when electricity is under-utilised during periods of low demand. As most electric cars will be plugged-in during the night for charging, the V2G link to the batteries within electric cars provides additional storage capacity for the grid (reducing the need to build extra power plants). However, there a number of social and technical barriers that require government support before any benefits can be realised.

The Toyota Prius has been the biggest sales success for electric vehicles (Source:www.greenmonk.net)

V2G may also effectively utilise fluctuating power generated from renewable sources such as wind turbines. However, as most wind turbines produce most of their electricity at night, just when EVs would need to be recharged, a V2G strategy presents an energy storage technology, which could be part of a flexible energy system that better utilises fluctuating renewable energy sources. This would support the development and integration of such renewable sources of electricity (wind power, solar photovoltaics and others) into the grid, without the need for spinning reserves and load management. The cars could supplement existing large-scale pumped hydroelectric and compressed air energy storage systems, which have proven effective for enhancing the value of renewable-energy technologies to date.

The UK National Grid has teamed up with 2OC, a company, which has developed “geo-pressure” technology to utilize the enormous pressure inside the UK gas pipelines, which supply UK homes.

(source: www.cryostar.com)

The first of several planned schemes will see the implementation of small turbines inside the gas network, to produce 20MW of clean energy by 2010 from the natural gas that is delivered at high pressures through the pipes.

The innovative technology will support the National Grid, which owns most of the UK’s gas pipeline, in meeting its targets of sourcing all of its internal energy use from renewable technology. It is estimated that on completion of the eight planned schemes across the UK, the combined renewable energy generation could be as much as 1GW – the equivalent a conventional coal or nuclear power station.

Andrew Mercer from 2OC explains that

“Natural gas is at far too high a pressure when it is drilled from underground reservoirs, so can’t be used safely in homes. It would just blow up your gas cooker.”

Instead, the pressure must be released at hundreds of sites across the supply network known as pressure reduction stations (PRSs). 2OC plans to build mini-power stations across these PRSs, to capture this energy, which is currently lost, to generate clean electricity.

Whilst the technology has in some form been in the spotlight before – the US considered it at some sites in the 80s – the huge associated costs have meant that it did not become more widespread. The British engineers expect to reduce costs by combining the technology with a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit at high efficiency. 

Mercer has also identified another use for the technology, which he calls “free cold“. Reducing the gas pressure also delivers significant temperature drops, from as much as 10C to -30C, presenting an opportunity as a potential replacement technology in refrigeration and air conditioning units. In addition there have been talks about using this technology for large scale cooling close to letdown stations, such as the EU’s proposed concentrated solar power project across Northern Africa (making the project planned for the blistering heat of the Sahara desert more feasible) and also to supply the huge cooling needs of large computer data centres.

The emergence and implementation of such innovative ideas is well received by environmentalists, particularly in light of the momentum we have built on the climate change agenda in the UK. Despite the technology being in its pilot stages in the UK, if implementation of the technology continues across the 2000+ potential sites in the UK, this would significantly reduce the UK’s dependence on foreign imports of fossil fuels to satisfy it’s ever-increasing energy consumption. Whilst enabling the UK to meet carbon reduction targets (to contribute to the mitigation of climate change) and increasing energy security, it should be noted that the technology uses the high pressure from deliveries of natural gas. If supplies are depleting, do we need to consider other ways of using this technology – assuming fewer deliveries gas? I think we do.

In terms of prices, I would expect that after initial investments to install geo-pressure technology at PRSs, the dual function (additional clean energy) which can be harnessed from deliveries of natural gas should reduce the prices of gas for end users, but whether this might be cancelled out by the increasing gas prices from overseas remains to be seem.