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5. Tory Green Energy Promises
‘By 2020, 1 million homes & businesses could be producing
2GW of electricity’. Oliver Letwin
The Conservative Party’s new policy on energy has been outlined
in their report ‘Power to the People’. It’s essentially
a charter for decentralised power, focussed on microgeneration, using
a FIT system to promote it. It says they will:
* Change the architecture of Britain’s electricity supply,
so decentralised energy can play a major part in satisfying our needs
and enable every small business, local school, hospital and household
in the country to generate electricity through micro-generation. Ensure
smart meters, which measure electricity flowing out as well as into
a premises, are available free of charge to anyone installing micro-generating
capacity.
*Introduce a system of feed-in tariffs, so that a fixed price is paid
for all electricity produced from decentralised, low carbon sources-
such as wind power, photovoltaic, combined heat and power, biomass,
waste and micro-hydro. Allow any individual or organisation using
an accredited professional to install a certified low carbon generating
appliance of below 250kW to be eligible to receive these feed-in tariffs.
Empower the Secretary of State to set feed-in tariffs for each form
of micro-generation, which will be added as credits onto the bill
of every micro-generating producer according to the amount of electricity
they produce.
* Create a Decentralised Energy Fund, so that the electricity supplier’s
net cost in paying the tariff will be met by Government. Fund the
scheme in the first few years through the abolition of existing grant
schemes for micro-generation, with costs over the long term met by
the revenues received from the auction of permits for the Emissions
Trading Scheme. Work with the financial sector to develop long-term
fixed-rate lending schemes so that the purchase of micro-generating
capacity becomes easily affordable.
*Adjust the planning system to make the installation of micro generating
equipment simpler and quicker, and oblige the regulator, Ofgem, to
reduce carbon emissions through the encouragement of decentral energy.
TECHNOLOGY Their emphasis is on micropower but they define that as
anything up to 250kW. That’s a lot bigger than any domestic unit
(2-5 kW)- it’s up to ‘municipal power’ level. So its
not surprising that the report can say that ‘CHP is efficient
only if the generator is decentralised and positioned close to the point
where the heat is being used, since much of the heat would otherwise
be lost in transmission across long distances’, but not admit
that domestic scale CHP is much less efficient.
On wind power, which they have indicated (see Renew 171) they want to
throttle back on, at least on land, they say that while ‘the large-scale
on-shore wind farms that play a part in the current, centralised architecture
of the electricity supply industry can cause significant environmental
problems in terms of their impact on the landscape, and can consequently
be highly controversial’ but claim that small scale wind can be
better. ‘If the architecture of the system is changed, and smaller-scale,
decentralised wind turbines become more feasible, these landscape-environmental
problems and objections from local communities can be reduced or eliminated.
Small-scale wind turbines tend to be more expensive than their large-scale
counterparts per unit of electricity produced and are not suited to
all locations, especially low-lying urban areas. But, in the right locations,
they can be carbon efficient, saving as much as one tonne of CO2 per
year per home powered.’
And they say ‘Biomass is particularly suited to a decentralised
electricity architecture, within which the generating machines (which
range in scale from the size of a garden shed to the size of a barn)
can be located on or near to the farms where the plants or trees are
grown. Essentially the same constraint applies to energy from waste
generation, which uses anaerobic digestion, incineration or gasification
to produce electricity, thereby avoiding the use of primary fossil fuels.
This form of low carbon generation is more efficient if it is located
close to the point at which the waste is produced- since the bulky waste
otherwise has to travel large distances, producing large amounts of
carbon.’
And on solar PV they say ‘In the right locations, about 40 square
metres of PV panels- roughly the size of a normal roof- will supply
all the electricity for a medium-sized house’, while ‘in
a decentralised system, micro-hydro-electric generation can be introduced,
making use of the power from smaller rivers and mill-streams which are
not sufficiently powerful to sustain major hydro-electric dams. Rivers
with a fall (or ‘head height’) of three metres or more can
support such generation- which can be used to provide low-carbon electricity
for neighbouring areas.’
For the larger schemes like wind farms, they say they will ‘replace
the Renewables Obligation Certificate scheme with a new system of support
for large-scale decentralised electricity generation. Our proposals
will ensure that contracts already made by electricity suppliers with
generating companies that have invested in renewable energy on the basis
of the Renewables Obligation Certificate scheme are honoured. But we
will restructure the mechanisms of support so that they are less bureaucratic
and provide proper incentives for forms of low carbon, large-scale decentralised
generation which have not hitherto benefited from the Renewables Obligation
Certificate scheme. We will also be bringing forward plans to encourage
more efficient use of heat in large scale generating plants, and to
promote greater carbon capture and storage for fossil fuel power stations.’
So- less wind farms.
Defining terms
‘Power to the people’ says that ‘by electricity micro-generation,
we mean low carbon generators of below 250kW- roughly the size of generator
that is required to provide electricity for 120 medium sized homes,
a large school, or a medium-sized business’. This is a revision
from the ‘50kWp’ limit mentioned in the Party’s earlier
‘Quality of Life’ working group report (see Renew 171).
Even that is larger than for any house. The new report also has a classification
for ‘Large-scale decentralised generation’ which they say
consists of ‘CHP plants, medium-sized or large single wind turbines,
biomass generators, energy from waste generators, photovoltaic panel
arrays and micro-hydro plants which are big enough to generate electricity
(and in some cases heat) for whole housing developments, large factories,
large office blocks, large retail outlets, universities and large public
buildings’.
Basically it seems they wish to blur the distinction between individual
and ‘local’ decentralised generation, and separate that
out from ‘larger scale’ generation- including on-land wind
farms, which they want to throttle back on.
The battle over terminology is not just of academic interest. It reflects
real differences. The Tories are seeking to reflect and presumably exploit
local discontent about on-land wind farms and have proposed that the
Renewables Obligation be revised to redirect funding towards other larger
scale renewables.
The Labour government by contrast believes than wind power, both on
land and offshore, is a vital element of its renewables programme. Both
Labour and Conservatives also however no doubt want to capture any popular
enthusiasm for domestic micro-power & community energy projects.
At the launch of the new report David Cameron said ‘By enabling
people to generate their own electricity, we are literally giving them
more power over their own lives. This really is power to the people.
Once people start generating their own electricity, they will become
far more conscious of the way in which they use it- they will become
more responsible about energy use and their own environmental impact.’
He put this in Party political terms: ‘there is something of a
philosophical divide here. I know that the Labour government pays lip
service to decentralised energy, but really it has only tinkered at
the edges. There’s still a ‘big government knows best’
attitude- straight out of the bureaucratic age. Still an impulse to
tangle everything up in bureaucracy which just holds back innovation
and progress.’
However progress may not be as simple as he might hope. Hostility to
the requirement for on-site renewables from the building industry arguably
presents the Tories with more of a problem than it does Labour, since
the construction industry has traditionally supported the Tories. Nevertheless,
they seem willing to persevere and also to take on the large electricity
utilities, in its pursuit of local micropower. At the launch of the
new report Oliver Letwin, chair of the Party’s review committee,
commented ‘By changing the architecture of the electricity supply
industry and opening the way for decentralisation, we can open up opportunities
for a range of technologies that are more carbon efficient and which
waste less’. Sadly he seemed to misunderstand the argument, since
he then added: ‘Part of the reason why our centralised supply
industry produces so much carbon is that a large amount of the power
it generates is wasted. A staggering two-thirds of energy used in power
stations never reaches the consumer. It is lost in the wires that transmit
it.’ Oops- it’s more like 9% max. The rest is wasted as
heat from cooling towers...
* Power to the People makes much of Germany’s success with REFIT,
but links that to micropower, whereas in fact it’s mainly been
wind which has benefitted. Micropower is only at about 0.4%
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