Extracts from NATTA's journal
Renew, issue 148 March-April 2004

7. CHP gap confirmed

A 20% gap in the delivery of the Government’s target for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) was  confirmed in a study last year, Lord Whitty, Minister for Sustainable Energy, commented ‘The signals are clearly flashing amber on the road to our CHP target for 2010.’  

The CHP Association commented that this shortfall would mean that the UK’s carbon emissions will be 1.3 million tonnes higher than planned.  The UK’s CHP target is 10 GWe (i.e. electricity generating capacity) by 2010, but a study by Cambridge Econometrics for the DTI and DEFRA confirmed that only 8.1 GWe of CHP capacity will be delivered by the end of the decade.

At the CHPA annual conference last Nov, David Green, Director of the CHPA, commented bitterly: “Government has finally come clean that it is going to significantly undershoot its 2010 CHP target. Industry has long been sceptical of the Government’s own confidence in its current policy mechanisms delivering for CHP. After 18 months of waiting, this new research entirely vindicates industry experience. The Energy White Paper commits Government to the 10 GWe target yet fails to bring forward the measures needed to secure it. This does not bode well for the robustness of the Government’s commitment to a lower carbon economy and to the delivery of its renewable energy targets when the going gets tough.”

Community Heating

But as some sort of compensation, there was the news from DEFRA that the government was providing £6m to boost energy-efficient schemes which will heat homes, hospitals, schools and other public buildings, via the £50m Community Energy scheme.

Leicester City Council has won £5.1m for the first city-wide community heating scheme to be supported under the  programme. A heat main will link Leicester University, four housing estates and 16 council owned buildings in the first phase of a planned £70m project. Other grants announced were £536,000 to Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust for a scheme serving the St George’s and Goodmayes hospitals, £318,000 for the Shetland Charitable Trust and £113,488 to Kilburn Square Housing Cooperative.

These grants were in the fifth round of allocations under the Community Energy scheme, which support projects which help to reduce energy bills and combat both greenhouse gases and fuel poverty. The four new schemes together will cut carbon emissions by more than 6,000 tonnes a year.

Lord Whitty told the Combined Heat and Power Association conference “Leicester’s scheme is particularly exciting and I hope it will inspire other cities to develop large-scale community heating schemes. Our Community Energy programme is well-placed to help deliver projects of this size, with benefits for people and the environment.”

* The Community Energy scheme was launched as a two-year programme in January 2002 and extended to three years last May.  It is managed on behalf of Defra by the Energy Saving Trust and the Carbon Trust. The first four bidding rounds released £16.4 million in funding.   

CHP Boost   Subsequently the government gave CHP a boost by specifying a new target to source at least 15% of electricity for use from ‘good quality’ CHP by 2010.