Tag Archives: ENERGY

ReGen Villages: is this the future of sustainable living? 

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‘Illustration © EFFEKT’

The Netherlands covers an area of 41,543 km², and has a population of 17 million people. That works out at 488 people per square kilometre, making Holland the most densely populated country in the European Union. By comparison, the UK has a population density of 413 people per sq km, while the figure for Scotland is just 68 people per sq km

Statistics like that matter when it comes to waste management. Lack of space in the Netherlands has prompted successive governments to divert waste from landfill, and encourage more recycling. The waste management movement was strongly influenced by Ad Lansink, a chemistry lecturer turned politician, who developed “Lansink’s Ladder”. This tool has six “rungs”, with disposal on the bottom, then recovery, recycling, reuse and on the top rung prevention.

The Dutch approach has reaped impressive benefits, with high rates of recycling and most of the remainder being incinerated to generate electricity and heat.

However, there is a growing sense that recycling in the Netherlands may be close to its limit. In 2015, Green Growth in the Netherlands reported that since 2000, the percentage of recycled waste has remained more or less constant.

“Recycled material reached 81% in 2012, a high share that has been fairly constant over the years. This may indicate that the recycling percentages are close to their achievable maximum.”

The Dutch are now looking for further ways to create more value from recycled waste.

ReGen Villages

One such idea is the development of  “regenerative villages” (ReGen). These self-reliant communities will produce their own food, generate their own energy and recycle their own waste.

The ReGen model is the brainchild of California-based ReGen Villages, which is partnering with EFFEKT, a Danish architecture practice, to launch a pilot version in the Netherlands this year. 

Each ReGen community will contain a variety of homes, greenhouses and public buildings, with built-in sustainable features, such as solar power, communal fruit and vegetable gardens and shared water and waste management systems.  The five principles underpinning the concept are:

  • energy positive homes,
  • door-step high-yield organic food production,
  • mixed renewable energy and storage,
  • water and waste recycling,
  • empowerment of local communities

The first 25 pilot prefabricated homes will be located at Almere in the west of Holland. Almere has experienced exponential growth, rising from farmland in the 1970s to become the seventh largest city in the Netherlands.

Waste management is a key element in the ReGen villages, which will have  ‘closed-loop’ waste-to-resource systems that turn waste into energy.

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‘Illustration © EFFEKT’

Prospects and problems

There are plans to roll out the model in other communities, in Europe, North America and the Middle East. Off-grid communities are not a new idea. But the necessary technology, falling costs and consumer demand have reached a point where the ReGen approach may become truly sustainable. The idea offers the promise of meeting the challenges of rising populations making unprecedented demands on limited resources.

Interviewed in The Guardian, Frank Suurenbroek, professor of urban transformation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, acknowledged the need for such projects, but also highlighted potential problems:

“A possible field of tension is how the technological demands of sustainability and circularity [interact with] spatial configurations needed to create attractive places and the desire to create new houses fast. Both worlds have to learn how to connect. Experiments with new sustainable quarters are interesting and needed, but a major issue is how to do this within existing built areas.”

All eyes on Almere

Once the first 25 homes are built, a further 75 will complete the village. It will take a lot of time, money, skill and muscle to make the project a success . We’ll be watching with interest to see if the vision can be turned into reality.

Our thanks to EFFEKT in Copenhagen for their permission to reproduce the images in this blog post.

If you’ve found this blog post interesting, you may also like our previous posts on recycling and the circular economy:

Is the sun setting on the UK’s onshore wind industry?

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In its 2015 election manifesto, the Conservative Party made a clear promise:

“We will halt the spread of onshore windfarms”

Soon after winning the election, the Conservative government followed through on this commitment, introducing three key changes concerning onshore wind in England and Wales:

  1. New planning guidance was issued stating that onshore wind farms must be sited in areas “identified as suitable for wind energy in a local or neighbourhood plan”, and that any objections from local communities to proposed developments must be “fully addressed”.
  2. Energy secretary Amber Rudd announced the phasing-out of renewables subsidies, with onshore wind subsidies ending a year earlier than planned, in April 2016.
  3. The government’s 2015 Energy Bill (England and Wales) included a measure to devolve powers to determine major onshore wind farm applications (with a capacity of more than 50 megawatts) to local authorities.

Onshore wind in context

Since the construction of the UK’s first commercial wind farm in 1991, onshore wind energy has grown to become the country’s largest source of renewable energy generation. With more than 8GW of operational capacity, onshore wind accounted for 11% of the country’s electricity last year, reaching a record 17% in December.

An Office for National Statistics survey reported that, in 2014, about 3,000 businesses were operating in the onshore wind sector, which employed 6,500 people across the UK – 3,000 in England, 2,500 in Scotland, and 500 each in Wales and Northern Ireland, generating £2.8bn.

Renewable UK, which represents the wind and marine energy sector, argues that onshore wind is an environmentally-friendly and cost effective form of energy:

“A modern 2.5MW (commercial scale) turbine, on a reasonable site, will generate 6.5 million units of electricity each year – enough to make 230 million cups of tea.”

In recent years, higher capacity turbines and improvements and reductions in installation, operation and maintenance costs have made onshore wind more economically attractive. The European Wind Energy Association claims that onshore wind is now the cheapest form of new power generation in Europe.

Responses to the policy changes

In its manifesto, the Conservative Party acknowledged that onshore wind makes a meaningful contribution to the country’s energy mix, but observed that onshore windfarms often fail to win public support, and are unable by themselves to provide the capacity that a stable energy system requires. The government has since underlined that there is no longer any need for subsidising onshore wind and that the £800m in subsidies added about £10.00 to an annual household energy bill.

An article in The Economist agreed that subsidies for renewables were too generous and pointed out that onshore wind is an unreliable energy source. This was echoed by former environment secretary Owen Paterson, who said:  “There is absolutely no place for subsidising wind – a failed medieval technology which during the coldest day of the year so far produced only 0.75 per cent of the electricity load.”

However, environmental campaigners, such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Jonathon Porritt, argued that scrapping support for wind turbines, rather than phasing them out, would increase the cost of meeting carbon reduction targets, or increase the risk of missing them. This, in turn, they said would lead the UK to pursue more expensive decarbonisation options, resulting in additional costs to consumers.

Meanwhile, energy companies warned that the policy changes had made some renewable power projects “uninvestable”.  In October 2015, the Financial Times reported that one renewable energy company had scrapped nine onshore wind projects in England in the previous four months, halting investments of more than £250m. The company said it had instead switched its investments to projects in the Netherlands and Germany.

In Scotland, which has 61% of the UK’s onshore wind capacity, the Scottish Government has stressed that it continues to support onshore wind and other sources of renewable energy. In December 2015, Scottish chief planner John McNairney wrote to Scotland’s heads of planning explaining that the administration has not changed its stance on onshore wind farms or energy targets.

The planning changes

With regard to the planning aspects of the policy reforms, the Royal Town Planning Institute questioned the need to enable major wind farm projects to be decided locally, given that local planning authorities already have final consenting power for onshore wind farms under 50 megawatts, which make up the majority of applications.

In July 2015, Planning Resource reported that the policy was already having an impact. Kieran Tarpy, managing director at planning consultancy Entrust, said that within days of the new guidance being announced one council had refused a planning application based on the need for community backing. He predicted that the policy changes would have a “dramatic impact” on the number of proposals going into the system.

However, last month, Planning Resource reported that some local authorities, including councils in Hull, Cumbria and Devon, have drawn up draft policies to allocate areas as suitable for wind energy.

The UK government may still be committed to halting the spread of onshore wind farms, but it appears that rumours of the death of onshore wind have been exaggerated.

What next for energy efficient homes?

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Guest post, by Dr Alina Congreve, Centre for Cities, University of Hertfordshire, and
Dr Dan Greenwood, University of Westminster

The controversy surrounding the scrapping of the zero carbon target for new homes continues, despite its removal by the government in July 2015. The House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee report, published in March 2016, was highly critical of the government’s approach to energy efficiency and housing. There has also been a strong reaction to the closure of the Zero Carbon Hub at the end of March. The Hub was widely regarded as an exemplary model of collaboration between government, industry and third sector.

Critics of the government’s approach to new housing policy point out that the initial drivers behind the zero carbon target have not gone away. European requirements that all new buildings are ‘nearly zero’ energy by 2021 are still in place. The Climate Change Act requires a fall in emissions of 80% by 2050 (from a 2006 baseline). Given the limits to reduction from retrofitting existing buildings, emissions reductions from new build need to be even higher.

There is a widespread view within the sector that the most effective way to achieve energy efficient new homes is through regulation, supported by appropriate tools and training developed in collaboration with the industry. For planners working in local authorities, the options for requiring developers to go beyond the Building Regulations are severely curtailed. Following the Housing Standards Review, they can no longer require developers to build to higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Influencing new development through stronger regulations was a key part of many cities’ climate action plans.

In spite of this, local authorities are still able to set higher environmental requirements for commercial buildings and insist that developers build to BREEAM standards. When the costs and savings of regulation are calculated by the government the energy savings to office occupants are included in the calculations. However, when the costs of energy standards for new homes are calculated by the government, energy savings for households are not included. The current processes of reviewing policy are based on financial costs and benefits, but value judgements are made about which costs are included. The Housing Standards Review has created a long period of uncertainty for the industry. The transaction costs that result from this uncertainty, such as staff training or product development to meet a new standard that is subsequently withdrawn, are also not included in policy impact financial calculations.

Possible front cover image II

In the short-term, strengthening Building Regulations or modernizing regulatory tools such as the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) seem unlikely. Voluntary codes and standards can have an important complementary role to play alongside regulation. Some landowners who wish to go beyond the legal minimum find a benchmark developed by a third party valuable. Current examples can be found in Norwich, where the city council is using a combination of AECB and Passivhaus standards on sites that it owns and are being developed for housing. In the current market for new homes, consumer drivers are relatively weak and buyers and mortgage lenders rarely place a premium on energy efficiency or other sustainable features. There is, however, the potential to do more to change this situation. If a standard adds value to a property by appealing to buyers, then the business case to do more becomes much stronger.

These views are based on a report carried out for the  Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Trust on the Future for policy and standards for low and zero carbon new homes. The report draws on over 70 interviews with key stakeholders in the industry. It is available free to download.

Alina Congreve is an Associate at the Centre for Cities at the University of Hertfordshire. An experienced sustainability and built environment professional, Alina has specialist expertise in a number of areas, including sustainability and new residential development and resource efficiency in construction.

Read our other blog posts on energy efficient homes:

Fossil fuel divestment:an idea whose time has come?

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Introduction

Within just a few years, fossil fuel divestment has overtaken previous campaigns targeting apartheid in South Africa and tobacco advertising to become the fastest growing divestment movement in history.

In September, a report from Arabella Advisors found that 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets had committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.

What is Fossil Fuel Divestment?

Organisations, communities and individuals commit to fossil fuel divestment (FFD) by making a public pledge to stop buying stocks, bonds and investment funds from energy companies whose primary business relies upon coal, gas or oil. They also promise to invest in climate solutions, such as clean energy and sustainable agriculture.

Who’s involved in FFD?

The roots of the FFD movement may be found in the college campuses of the United States, where student campaigning has resulted in around 40 educational institutions (including the universities of California, Georgetown and Stanford) making full or partial divestments from fossil fuels.

The movement has spread rapidly beyond the education sector, taking in religious groups, municipalities, NGOs and healthcare organisations. While most divesting institutions are US-based, FFD has also become a worldwide movement, with the cities of Oslo in Norway and Uppsala in Sweden, and the Australian Capital Territory Government making their own commitments. Pledges to divest from fossil fuels have also been made by some surprising sources, including the Australian city of Newcastle (home to the largest coal port in the world) and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune).

In the UK, the FFD movement has also seen exponential growth. Last year, the University of Glasgow became the first academic institution in Europe to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Since then, other higher education institutions, including the universities of Oxford and Surrey and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have made pledges to reduce their fossil fuel investments.

Four UK local authorities – Oxford, Bristol, Kirklees and Cambridge – have committed to FFD, while councils in York, Bradford, Reading and Hackney are reviewing their fossil fuel investments.

Other high-profile organisations committing to FFD include the British Medical Association and the Environment Agency’s pension fund.

The factors driving FFD

Moral and economic arguments have converged to propel fossil fuel divestment. FFD advocates say it’s morally wrong to profit from climate change, a view powerfully expressed by Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

“Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who conducted business with apartheid South Africa were aiding and abetting an immoral system, we can say that nobody should profit from the rising temperatures, seas, and human suffering caused by the burning of fossil fuels.”

There is also a growing recognition in the business world of the financial risks associated with investment in fossil fuels. As the Arabella Advisors report observed:

“Reports by Citigroup analysts, HSBC, Mercer, the International Energy Agency, Bank of England, Carbon Tracker Initiative, and others have offered evidence of a significant, quantifiable risk to portfolios exposed to fossil fuel assets in a carbon constrained world. The leaders of several of the largest institutions to divest in the past year have cited climate risk to investment portfolios as a key factor in their decisions.”

At the same time, falling costs have made renewable energy more attractive both to consumers and investors, although investment in clean energy is far from the estimated $1 trillion annually needed to limit global warming to 2˚C.

Resistance and resurgence

FFD is not without its critics, and some organisations have resisted pressure to change.  Last month the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) rejected calls to divest its endowment from the fossil fuel industry. Instead, MIT argued that engaging with the fossil fuels industry was a more effective way to address climate change. Similarly, Harvard University has declined to stop buying fossil fuel company stocks, claiming its research and teaching contributes to a better understanding of global warming.

But FFD campaigners are not backing down. In May the University of Edinburgh ruled out a wholesale sell-off of its £27m investments in oil, gas and coal companies. However, after a 10-day occupation by students the university clarified its position, and announced it would fully divest from three of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers within six months.

There is also growing pressure on local authority pension funds to reduce their fossil fuel investments. In September, it was reported that UK local government pension funds hold over £14 billion in coal, oil and gas companies.

The focus now shifts to the UN Climate Change Conference, starting today in Paris. Divestment campaigners are making it clear that they expect governments attending the Paris summit to follow the lead of the FFD movement by committing to phase out support for the consumption and production of fossil fuels.

 

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in environment policy are interesting our research team.

Further reading

A beginner’s guide to fossil fuel divestment

The case for fossil-fuel divestment

Another world first for London Underground: energy from braking trains

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By James Carson

London’s Tube may be the oldest underground network in the world, but it’s still breaking new ground. Last month, engineers began testing a process that enables waste energy from Tube train brakes to be collected and recycled.

In just one week of operation, the new technology recovered enough power to run a station as large as Holborn for more than two days per week. Transport for London (TfL) believes the results show that the new green technology could allow London Underground to tap into a previously inaccessible resource, reducing its overall carbon footprint and saving as much as £6m every year for reinvestment in improving transport.

State-of-the-art

The new ‘inverter’ system was used for the first time at the Cloudesley Road substation on the Victoria line for a five-week trial. It works by collecting energy generated by the trains when they brake before feeding it back into the power mains as electricity.

Commenting on the successful trial, Chris Tong, LU’s Head of Power and Cooling, said:

‘This state-of-the-art regenerative braking system has the potential to transform how we power stations across the TfL network, unlocking massive power savings and significantly reducing our energy bills.”

As well as saving energy, the technology has the added benefit of reducing the amount of heat generated by trains braking in tunnels, which in turn would reduce the energy required to operate London Underground’s cooling systems.

“The trial puts London at the cutting edge of this kind of technology,” said Matthew Pencharz, London’s deputy mayor for environment and energy. “And it clearly demonstrates how energy from trains can be recovered to power Tube stations, making the network more environmentally friendly and cost-effective.”

‘Green’ modernisation

The trial follows a number of other measures put in place by the Mayor and Transport for London to ‘green’ the Capital’s Tube system. In January, it was announced that the historic Greenwich Power Station would be revamped to transform it into a low-carbon power generator for the Tube network. Its six new gas engines will replace existing boilers and provide cheaper, cleaner power for the Tube, with waste heat being channelled into a new local heat network that will also benefit residents.

Green technology is an important part of London Underground’s largest programme of modernisation in decades, with major stations, trains, track and control systems being updated or replaced to provide a 30 per cent increase in capacity across the Tube network.

Recycling energy from braking systems is one example of ways in which engineers and architects are thinking more creatively about meeting the needs of a rapidly growing city. Another radical proposal from a London architecture practice has suggested replacing the Circle Line with a high-speed travelator!

 

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in transport and environment policy are interesting our research team.

Further reading*

Equipping London for the challenges of the future

Waste not, want not at TfL (waste management at Transport for London)

Squeezing in (off-peak working and commuting in London)

Leading London into a smarter future (Transport for London)

World class? London’s transport – progress and future challenges

*Some resources may only be available to members of the Idox Information Service

The Aktivhaus: is this the future of sustainable living?

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DEU, Stuttgart, Dokumentation Aufbau Pavillon Wei§enhofsiedlung, Werner Sobek Design GmbH , Fertigstellung: 2014 , DIGITAL 100 MB 8 Bit. - ©Zooey Braun; Veroeffentlichung nur gegen Honorar, Urhebervermerk und Beleg / permission required for reproduction, mention of copyright, complimentary copy, FUER WERBENUTZUNG RUECKSPRACHE ERFORDERLICH!/ PERMISSION REQUIRED FOR ADVERTISING!

Photo reproduced with permission of Werner Sobek Design GmbH , Fertigstellung: ©Zooey Braun

By James Carson

Earlier this year, we looked at a style of building known as Passivhaus, which is playing an important role in creating energy-efficient homes. Now, another concept – the Aktivhaus – is taking this approach even further, graduating from energy-saving to energy-generating homes.

The Aktivhaus concept

Like Passivhaus, the Aktivhaus has its origins in Germany. Stuttgart-based architect Werner Sobek defines Aktivhaus buildings as those which:

  • offset their annual total energy consumption in a sustainable manner;
  • anticipate and react accordingly to relevant changes both inside and outside the house;
  • continuously measure and optimise all energy streams.

Sobek’s idea has been realised in the form of a building called B10. This prototype Aktivhaus – prefabricated offsite and assembled in a single day – is located at the Weissenhof settlement in Stuttgart. It’s an appropriate site for applying a revolutionary concept – in 1927 the Weissenhof estate hosted a housing exhibition that included designs by leading lights in modern architecture, such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The Aktivhaus enacted

On the face of it, B10 is an 85 square-metre box with a full-length window. But its sophisticated design means the Aktivhaus can generate twice as much electric power from sustainable energy sources as it consumes. This means it can not only satisfy its own electricity needs, but can also power two electric cars and a neighbouring house built by Le Corbusier for the 1927 exhibition.

The ‘active’ element in the Aktivhaus is a mini computer, connected to the internet, that monitors weather forecasts and enables the house to respond accordingly, with different rooms heated or cooled at different times of the day. Other elements include a highly efficient heating system, web app-operated functions to control lighting and window blinds, and 17mm thick vacuum glazing whose three layers keep heat in and draughts out.

Werner Sobek believes that the Aktivhaus concept is not only applicable to new homes. “Our system is very helpful for old buildings,” he told the New York Times.

“Some might feel it best to leave the imperfections as they are and not invest in major energy improvements and instead rely on the surplus energy from a ‘sister house,’ but the system can also help you decide to make modest changes to the windows or to improve the boiler.”

DEU, Stuttgart, Musterhaus Wei§enhofsiedlung, AWerner Sobek Design, Fertigstellung: 2014 , DIGITAL 100 MB 8 Bit. - ©Zooey Braun; Veroeffentlichung nur gegen Honorar, Urhebervermerk und Beleg / permission required for reproduction, mention of copyright, complimentary copy, FUER WERBENUTZUNG RUECKSPRACHE ERFORDERLICH!/ PERMISSION REQUIRED FOR ADVERTISING!

Photo reproduced with permission of Werner Sobek Design, Fertigstellung: 2014: ©Zooey Braun

Over three years, researchers will study B10’s performance as a real-life residence. The building can later be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere, and when it reaches the end of its life almost all parts of the Aktivhaus have been designed to be recycled.

With construction costs of €100,000 and the technology inside priced at a further €600,000, the Aktivhaus is hardly an affordable housing option. But eventual scaling up of production could drive those costs down.

In the meantime, the ideas coming out of the Aktivhaus project may influence those looking for ways to tackle the ongoing issues of housing shortages, climate change and fuel poverty.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on energy-efficient housing; to find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team.

Further reading*

PassivHaus … a home for all seasons?

Thermal vision (energy-efficient retrofit for social housing block)

Warmer outlook (energy efficient housing)

Building sustainable homes

Footprint: three Passivhaus projects

Building the future: the economic and fiscal impacts of making homes efficient

*Some resources may only be available to members of the Idox Information Service

Building Britain’s future: how the Infrastructure Act will affect local authorities

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By Steven McGinty

After several months of debate, the Infrastructure Act was given royal assent on the 12th February 2015, introducing a number of important changes. The Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech with the intention to:

“bolster investment in infrastructure and reform planning law to improve economic competitiveness”.

On the day of its assent, Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, expanded on this, explaining that:

“This act will hugely boost Britain’s competitiveness in transport, energy provision, housing development and nationally significant infrastructure projects. Cost efficient infrastructure development is all part of the government’s long term economic plan, boosting competitiveness, jobs and growth.”

The Act has resulted in a number of policy changes.  The majority of these are relatively mundane and are unlikely to engender much public scrutiny; however, there are a few high profile and controversial changes. Below I’ve outlined some of the most important changes for local authorities, as well as communities.

Land Registry

The Act has introduced changes to Local Land Charges, transferring responsibility from individual local councils in England and Wales to the Land Registry, which will be providing a broader range of services. This was recommended in the ‘Land Registry, Wider Powers and Local Land Charges’ report, which suggested a need to standardise costs and provide a more predictable service.

This has been criticised by the Local Government Association (LGA), who have suggested that local councils are best placed to meet the needs of businesses and local residents.  They have also raised concerns about the costs involved in making technical changes to local council systems, as well as the disruption it would cause to the property market. It’s estimated that local councils have about 20 million entries on their registers of Local Land Charges, across 350 local councils.

Community Rights and energy exploration (fracking and renewable energy)

Individuals within or connected to a community have been given the rights to buy a stake in renewable electricity schemes.  This appears to have been well received, as local residents are now able to receive some of the financial benefits of local electricity production.

However, changes to hydraulic fracking have been a lot more controversial.  The Act allows energy companies the right to exploit petroleum or deep geothermal energy, without notifying the owners of the land, as long as it’s at least 300 meters below surface level. They also have the right to put any substance underground, to change the condition of the land, and to leave material behind.

Not surprisingly, campaigners, such as Simon Clydesdale from Greenpeace UK, have criticised these changes, suggesting that the new legislation is encouraging fracking and is so loosely worded that it could possibly permit the burial of nuclear waste.

Discharge of Planning Conditions

The Act makes it clear that certain types of planning conditions can be discharged if on application to the local authority, the developer has not had a decision made within the prescribed period. It also allows the Secretary of State to make a development order relating to the discharge of a planning condition in an area. This would mean that local authorities would not be able to stop these developments for lack of written approval.

Mayoral Development Orders

These orders provide greater powers to the Mayor of London to grant planning permission for development on specified sites within Greater London. It’s been seen as a useful reform to make it easier for planning permission to be granted on complex sites that cross local authority boundaries. This has been viewed as important for tackling London’s housing shortage.

Although not all of the changes are as high profile as fracking, it’s important that local authorities take time to examine the Infrastructure Act, and to make sure that they are ready to respond to the new legislative environment.

Although many of the changes in the Infrastructure Act will not come into force until a later date, local authorities need to be aware of the possible impact on planning processes and procedures.

Over two thirds of UK local authorities use Idox solutions to effectively manage the property and development lifecycle.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on planning issues. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Further reading

Energy infrastructure: a heated debate

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Image: Hugh Venables, via Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License

A country’s energy infrastructure is its central nervous system.  Gas and electricity transmission lines, power stations and renewable energy, are the drivers of economic development, as well as keeping our homes light and warm.

But in recent years, a growing sense of urgency has surfaced regarding the future of the UK’s energy infrastructure. Concerns about lack of investment in new power stations have fuelled media reports voicing fears about the challenges of keeping the lights on.

The headline writers may be guilty of some exaggeration, but their concerns are not without foundation. Forecasts by Ofgem, the UK’s energy regulator, indicate that the country’s energy margin (the difference between energy generation supply and peak usage) could fall from 6% at the peak of winter demand in 2014-15 to a possible low of less than 2% just a year later.

And just yesterday, National Grid was in the news with a warning that its capacity to supply electricity this winter will be at a seven-year low due to generator closures and breakdowns.

In stark terms, a report, published this year by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) set out the state of the UK’s energy infrastructure:

“Significant quantities of the UK’s existing electricity generation capacity are expected to be retired soon, with major implications for security of supply unless the conditions to attract investment in new generation are provided. This situation is expected to be further exacerbated as the use of electricity for transport and residential heat increases demand.

And that’s without taking the unexpected into account. The recent serious fire at Didcot power station in Oxfordshire was just the latest in a number of incidents affecting power supply this year. Fires put two power stations in Shropshire and Yorkshire out of action, and four nuclear reactors have been taken offline until at least the end of the year for safety reasons. At the same time, plans for the next generation of gas-powered stations have yet to be enacted, and uncertainty surrounds the commercial viability of new nuclear energy capacity. Added to this complex mix is the contentious issue of fracking, which we focused on in a recent blog post.

For some, the answer to the energy gap lies with renewables, in particular wind power. Proponents argue that large-scale deployment of wind farms offers dual benefits: generating increasing amounts of energy, as well as minimising the effects of climate change.

A report, published earlier this year by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) explored the implications of increasing the amount of wind energy on the electricity system. While acknowledging that large wind turbines have an impact on local communities, the RAE indicated that the installed capacity of wind could more than double to around 26GW, providing around 20% of electrical energy consumed. That might seem like a tall order, but figures from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) show that in 2011 9.4% of UK electricity came from renewable sources, up on 2009, when just 6.7% of electricity was renewable.

Others are not so sure about the impact of renewables. Recently, former Environment Secretary of State Owen Paterson called for the ground-breaking Climate Change Act to be scrapped. He claims that the targets in the Act for cutting emissions are unachievable, too costly and will not provide the UK’s energy requirements:

“In the short and medium term, costs to consumers will rise dramatically, but there can only be one ultimate consequence of this policy: the lights will go out at some time in the future. Not because of a temporary shortfall, but because of structural failures, from which we will find it extremely difficult and expensive to recover.”

Instead of investing in wind power, Paterson argues, the UK should be looking at four alternative policies: shale gas, combined heat and power, small modular nuclear reactors and demand management.

As the energy debate heats up at national level, some local authorities are taking their own initiatives. Security of energy supply is of great concern to Southampton, a city keen to address strategic priorities, such as tackling fuel poverty, sustaining public services, generating economic development and reducing city-wide carbon emissions.

And so, Southampton City Council has taken a leading role in collaborating with other local authorities to build capacity through local energy generation schemes, large-scale energy efficiency works and local energy networks. The investment shows how seriously the council is taking energy resilience.

At the same time, along with local councils in six countries, Southampton has been a key partner in the European Union’s Leadership for Energy Action and Planning (LEAP) programme. LEAP aims to share expertise among partners to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, and increase the use of renewable energy.

Measures such as these are relatively small in scale, but they might prove crucial as we head into another winter.

 

Further reading

The Idox Information Service has a wealth of research reports, articles and case studies on a range of environmental issues. Items we’ve recently summarised for our database include:

Low-carbon transitions and the reconfiguration of urban infrastructure

A new approach to electricity markets: how new, disruptive technologies change everything

Power blackouts in the information age: the impact on emergency services

Is there a future role for coal? (Energy supply)

Taking the lead in a low-carbon future (low-carbon redevelopment in Southampton)

When the lights go out (threats to energy infrastructure)

Crossed wires (energy infrastructure for property developments)

N.B. Abstracts and full text access to subscription journal articles are only available to members of the Idox Information Service.

Smart Cities: recent literature

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data-stream-shutterstock_croppedby Laura Dobie

Recently, smart cities have emerged as a hot research topic, with cities, national governments and businesses exploring ways to exploit the potential of ICT to improve quality of life and achieve greater efficiency in service delivery.

Our new research briefing explores recent commentary and research in this area. It considers the definition of smart cities and highlights the characteristics of smart cities, and comments on issues which are being addressed in the built environment, such as the provision of appropriate digital infrastructure, decentralised energy and district heating schemes and energy efficiency measures.

The briefing takes a closer look at the deployment of smart technologies in the key area of transport and travel and discusses the commercial opportunities that smart cities present for businesses. It also considers issues with digital inclusion in smart cities, and the application of digital technologies in the co-production of internet-enabled services within emerging smart cities.

Our briefing, Smart Cities: recent literature, can be accessed here.

For more information on our products and services, and to access research briefings across a broad range of areas of public and social policy, visit the Knowledge Exchange website.

The ‘f’ word (fracking): crucial future energy source or greatest threat to the countryside?

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Fracking sign

© Copyright Martin Thomas and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence

By Laura Hughes

Fracking hasn’t been out of the headlines recently, particularly since the UK Government gave the green light for fracking across many parts of the country, including in national parks and other protected areas in ‘exceptional circumstances’.

Those in favour argue that fracking offers great opportunities to stabilise the country’s energy market and develop regional economies. Those against fracking claim that the environmental and health impacts are far too great, or too uncertain, to justify the process. So, what’s fracking really all about?

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