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Archive for March, 2008

local authorities must lead the way to low carbon

Posted in biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , on March 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »

My first day back in London and I’ve spent the morning schmoozing at a publication launch just off the Mall. Five minutes out of my cattle stall and I’m already moving and shaking. It was an event to publicise the TCPA’s new document, Community Energy: Urban Planning for a Low Carbon Future, and it attracted quite a crowd including MPs Nick Hurd and Keith Hill.

During the presentations and panel discussion, most people in the room seemed to feel that local authorities have the pivotal role to play in the creation of low carbon distributed energy networks. I totally agree, but I think we were missing part of the picture.

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CHP and SAP – part II

Posted in chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, DER Calculation, energy, engineering, other stuff, SAP, sustainability, utilities, tagged , on March 20, 2008| 6 Comments »

I’ve been spending some quality time with spreadsheets and have an update on the way building regs for housing treats CHP. It’s not as simple as I thought here, although the result is similar. The incorrect method I wrote about a few weeks back is still in use, but it’s different from what’s happening in SAP 2005. Here’s a breakdown:

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Come on you blues

Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , , on March 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Martin at isite has got in touch to urge us to wear blue on Earth Day (April 20th) to signify opposition to new coal.

We’re with you, Martin. Time to break out the body paint.

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Communal Wind Turbines and SAP

Posted in climate change, DER Calculation, energy, renewable energy, SAP, stamp duty exemption, wind turbines on March 14, 2008| 3 Comments »

Following on from here, I have been chasing BRE & CLG to clarify the situation. The sorry response is that no-one was really aware of the potential implications of this piece of policy. So it’s official, at this point it is not possible to include the power output from communal on-site wind turbines, even where connected via a private wire network.

I have been tasked by Ted King, Head of Building Regs at CLG, to formally write to all stakeholders highlighting the issues so that they can be considered (not necessarily resolved) during the revisions for SAP 2009/10 for the next Part L update. The good news is that this work is already underway to be ready for the consultation process in January 2009. So, no comfort for my client, but perhaps others will be able to avoid this.

For what it’s worth, I also contacted the BWEA to check whether they were aware of the situation, and no they were not but obviously very interested to make sure that their industry is not penalised in this manner in the future.

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…the weird turn pro

Posted in other stuff on March 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »

If you take a look at our URL you’ll see we’ve moved from the wordpress address over to carbonlimited.org. Things have been going pretty well here at the blog and we thought we might tart ourselves up a bit in the interests of professionalism.

I understand from two London mates who just visited me in Italy that if we want to be really trendy then we need to get perms. So now that we’ve got our own URL, that’s probably next.

All the old links should redirect so no need to update.

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60% by 2050? Only if we address existing housing

Posted in biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , , , , on March 10, 2008| 6 Comments »

Today Lord Turner’s panel met for the first time to discuss a concrete strategy for fufilling the UK’s commitment to reducing emissions by 60% by 2050 (and to consider upping the target to 80%). With around a third of UK emissions coming from housing, this sector will inevitably play a key role in their strategy. You might think we could rely on the Code for Sustainable Homes to get us there – after all, if all homes from 2016 are Code level 6 then there will be no net emissions from new housing. But unfortunately new homes are only a small part of the problem.

The graph below illustrates the predicted emissions from the housing sector by age of housing stock for the period 2002 to 2050. It shows that the overwhelming proportion of emissions will continue to come from houses built before 2002. The dotted lines represent the emissions from all housing required to achieve a 60% and 80% reduction in emissions vs 1990 levels. Emissions from each band decreases over time due to demolition.

carbon emissions from housing by age of stock

Figure 1. Carbon emissions from housing sector by age of housing stock, 2002 – 2050

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Communal Wind Turbines No Use for Zero Carbon Homes

Posted in chp, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, renewable energy, stamp duty exemption, sustainability on March 10, 2008| 6 Comments »

Communal wind turbines are currently of no use when trying to achieve Zero Carbon status for Stamp Duty Exemption. Here’s why… (more…)

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