Low-carbon UK on the way
July 28, 2009 at 10:46 am
It looks like the UK could soon be turning into a low-carbon economy after new plans were recently announced by the government. The plans are far reaching, and include a whole host of measures to reduce the country’s carbon footprint and lead to a reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions.
It is called the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, and includes changes to every sector of the country, including transport, businesses and home power use. Under the plans, by 2020 40% of our electricity will be green, and people will also be paid to generate their own electricity through feed-in tariffs.
The overall objective of the new plans is to cut emissions significantly by the year 2020. It will mean that as well as a financial budget, government departments will also have a carbon budget which they will have to deal with to prevent them going over their allocated emissions.
One of the fundamental concepts of the new plans is to create 1.2 million new environmental green jobs to help lead the revolution. This will mean that not only will we be helping the planet through implementing the changes, but we will also be helping ourselves out of the recession.
But we are still going to have to pay a price for the changes. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, stated that by 2020 our energy bills would go up as a result of the changes. However, he reassured us that financial help would be available for the worst hit. He also called the plan a “route map to 2020”, which “rises to the moral challenge of climate change”.
£10 million to DEFRA for anaerobic digestion projects
July 21, 2009 at 4:10 am
The Department of Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is looking at a very exciting new venture in terms of anaerobic digestion. This is the process by which methane is captured, having come from the decomposition of foods, waste and other organic materials, and then converted into energy supplies. The carbon dioxide can be removed to then produce biomethane, which could one day power all of our cars.
This month sees a huge cash injection into future projects in this field and paves the way for some optimistic plans for a varied and inventive array of renewable energy sources in the UK.
In South Shropshire a facility at Ludlow, GreenFinch, will see part of the £10 million in order to improve the methane gas production by around 15%. A new technology will break the cell structure down before digestion.
In East Yorkshire, money will go towards a facility able to take on 50,000 metric tonnes of food waste for anaerobic digestion at their plant in Driffield. Down south in the picturesque town of Shaftsbury in Dorset, the Blackmore Vale Dairy will be helped to correctly dispose of the tonnes of effluent from the dairy, which will heat and power the site as well as go into the National Grid too.
In Lincolnshire, the Stapes Group will see their funds go towards a thermophilic anaerobic digestion facility. This will generate electricity for the site as well as going to local businesses. The digestate, which is the left-over brown waste after an anaerobic digestion, will then become fertilizer.
Finally up in Davyhulme, near Manchester, a biogas facility will be added to the water treatment plant which will see 250 cubic metres of biogas leaving the site every hour and going on to bigger, better and greener things.
Power companies accused of ripping off customers
July 21, 2009 at 4:07 am
Research just released by consumer group Consumer Focus reveals that energy companies are not passing cuts in energy prices down to their customers, essentially ripping us all off.
The damning report claims that gas bills should actually be 7.4% cheaper than they currently are, and that electricity prices are 3.1% higher than they should be. This all means that we are being charged a total of £1.6 billion too much over the course of the year, which equates to £74 extra per household.
Consumer Focus has based its research on the wholesale prices that energy companies are paying, and states that crude oil has dropped in price by half since last July. However, despite the drop in price 2008 saw energy bills rise on average by 42%.
This disparity has led the group to demand that the energy companies “take responsibility” for their actions, and it has even asked that the government gets involved.
However, the power companies have hit back by stating that the research methods employed by Consumer Focus were fundamentally flawed. Ofgem, the industry regulator, agreed with this by saying that the data Consumer Focus had based its research on, which came from Ofgem, was used incorrectly.
Gary Felgate, who is the chief executive of the Energy Retail Association, was quick to point out that wholesale prices are not the only factor that determines the price of bills. On top of that, there are transport costs, carbon emissions reduction targets that have to be met and many other things besides, all of which have become a lot more expensive over the last year.
So has Consumer Focus got it wrong? It looks like it might have, but the fact that the research came out in the first place is an indication of just how difficult many people are finding it to pay their bills these days.
Strange dip in electricity demands in the UK
July 10, 2009 at 1:31 am
When the cold wind bites, our fuel bill often follows soon after. As winter turns to spring and spring to summer we usually expect to see our electricity and gas bills drop as we’re using the heating less so pay less per month. This has certainly been the case this year in the UK, but the sheer size of the drop in demand has really surprised a few industry people.
We are being told that the country’s economy is finally stabilising, or at least levelling out and not getting any worse. In the meantime energy customers in the UK have obviously been much more conscious of their bills and have been switching off appliances and lights in order to save money to a far greater extent than anyone expected. The drop in consumer demand, researched by the Inenco – the largest analysers of energy in the UK – has shown that residential demand has fallen in May 2009, compared with May 2008. British Gas has seen reductions in their yearly costs since October 2008, from £81 to £48 megawatt hours. A megawatt hour is like having 1,000,000 watts being used in your homes for an hour.
Demand has been plummeting since the recession first reared its ugly head back around 2007. What preceded the drop in demand around this time were increases in fuel bills. Nearly every energy company in the UK racked up its tariffs but then they came down to earth as people used less electricity last year. As demand falls so will the prices. British Gas has already dropped their electricity tariff by roughly £43 a year, which equates to roughly 10%. The other big companies are expected to do the same, but don’t count your chickens. They’ll no doubt be back up again when demand increases, that’s for certain.
Geothermal plant to power 5000 homes
July 10, 2009 at 1:28 am
We all know about solar and wind energy by now. They’re pretty easy to understand because the weather often reminds us. Tidal is fairly straightforward too, even though we don’t actually see it as often with our own eyes. But one renewable energy source we perhaps aren’t too familiar with is the invisible world of geothermal power.
Just to recap quickly, one generates geothermal power in this way: you dig a hole in the ground (about 2 miles down) and plant a pipeline straight into a thermal reservoir where it’s very hot (around 150C). The steam that rises from the reservoir travels up the pipe, into a turbine room, powers a turbine, which then turns a generator, which then produces electricity.
The latest news in geothermal technology comes from Cornwall. The makers of the Eden Project – the largest greenhouses in the world – have teamed up with EGS Energy and are planning on digging for heat below the Cornish surface. They aim to use the electricity generated from their geothermal plant to power the entire Eden Project by 2012. But they aren’t planning on stopping the venture there.
The energy partners aim to build the UK’s first geothermal energy plant and then go on to power at least 5000 local homes with electricity. This is roughly 3 megawatts of power. Now this might not seem like a lot and it isn’t in terms of the National Grid’s hunger for power. But the point is that the research the Eden Project and EGS have done has led them to believe that the thermal reservoirs under Cornwall could potentially generate enough power to supply 10% of the UK. There is no worry about the sun not being out or the wind not blowing either. It’s just a matter of building and running it.
Coal bed methane power generation is a first
July 3, 2009 at 1:42 am
There has been good news for the UK electricity sector as IGas (Island Gas Resources plc) has announced that it has managed to generate power from coal bed methane (also known as CBM) in Britain, marking the first time that this has been done in the country. The markets reacted well to the news, and shares in IGas went up by 29% on the London Stock Exchange upon its release.
The technique is common in other parts of the world, especially in the US, but up until now it had never been done in the UK. Coal bed methane is a natural gas which is extracted from coal beds and then used to generate electricity, and it is hoped that its extraction could now provide a boost for the future energy supply of the UK.
The results were announced after IGas had carried out a pilot project at Doe Green in northern England along with its partner in the venture, Nexen Inc. The success of the project led IGas to announce that it should soon be able to make commercial sales of CBM. It is also thought that by next year it will be able to power 1,200 homes with its 500 kilowatt generator.
After the success of this first project, IGas has now announced that it will begin a second project in Staffordshire. It has already gained approval from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and the company claimed to have “500 billion cubic feet of recoverable gas”, which will lead to “full scale development” in the next few years. If the project is successful, we could see CBM becoming a staple source of energy across the country from now on.
