Posted in chp, energy, engineering, ESCO, private wire, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon on June 11, 2009| 1 Comment »
Most people who work in the built environment agree that ESCO stands for Energy Services Company. But that seems to be the only thing about ESCOs that everyone agrees on – the term can mean vastly different things to different people.
So what is an ESCO?
The short answer is: there’s no one answer. Here’s a rough list of the services that an ESCO might offer. Keep in mind that a company might provide all, some, or only one of these services and still call themselves an ESCO:
Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon on May 20, 2009| 5 Comments »
We’ve all seen the private development sector hit the skids over the past nine months. At the moment, the only residential projects that seem to be going ahead are those with a large RSL component (and so grant-funded by the HCA). This has a serious implication from a regs point of view because from spring 2011 all publicly funded housing will have to meet Code 4 (pdf). That effectively means that the residential development sector, such as it is, has to meet its regulatory targets two years early.
Here’s a map (ok, I know Code 6 won’t look quite like that once the consultation finished, but it will still be a hell of a drop):
Bob Cervi, the editor at the CIBSE Journal, writes this month that on the road to zero carbon “it’s going to be a quick six years.”
It’s going to be an even quicker 5.
Posted in chp, energy, engineering, micro chp, renewable energy on May 14, 2009| 14 Comments »
We engineers are great at estimating energy and carbon emissions and dealing with concrete systems: pipes, wires, flues – that’s our bag. One of the things we do poorly (but for some reason are too willing to do) is financial modeling relating to low and zero carbon generation.
For the last couple of years I’ve been working alongside financial and commercial bods who actually do know what they’re on about and it’s been a real eye opener. They might not know how to size a duct but they can tell you where your business is making money – and where it isn’t.
On a recent project I was looking at small CHP engines (5 – 30kWe) on a sheltered housing scheme. As part of that work, I put together a simplified financial model (with guidance from the bods) to quickly test whether a given option was worth looking at in detail. It was hugely useful and threw up some surprising results – for example, none of the small engines I looked at could pay back its capital cost in its lifetime. Ouch.
So based on that work, here’s the model. I’m using micro-CHP as an example but it’s just as easy to use for renewables.
Posted in Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, zero carbon on February 18, 2009| 15 Comments »
A few months ago, I was in a meeting with Mark Davis, the civil servant in charge of the Zero Carbon consultation. He said, ‘In all the conversations I’ve had about Zero Carbon no one has ever protested that you can have too much energy efficiency!’ The people around the table laughed and nodded but I put my hand up to disagree and tried to make the following case:
Posted in energy, engineering, renewable energy, tagged CESP, HES, kick ass leaf hut on February 16, 2009| 3 Comments »
I spent a fair chunk of the weekend going through the CESP and HES consultations and it’s sucked the life right out of me. I think I may have consultation blindness. The worst part is, there’s a chance this might be a game-changing shift we’re witnessing here but 200 pages later it’s almost impossible to care.
Luckily I also spent a chunk of the weekend making a kick ass leaf hut with my 3 year old son. That may be the only reason I’ve survived.
Posted in biomass, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon on February 5, 2009| 4 Comments »
In the last post, I argued that we’ve got to strip the carbon out of almost all of our existing stock in order to hit the 2050 target. That’s a huge challenge. Phil Clark summed it up in a comment:
I would consider it a near impossibility to upgrade every old leaky house without some massively radical action.
I completely agree: it’s going to take radical action. But what kind? The picture gets a bit clearer if you take a look at where the carbon is coming from.
Looking at the graph from my previous post, we can take a snapshot of where the emissions will come from in 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario.
The pie chart above shows that of the emissions from houses in 2050, almost 2/3 will come from heat. Electricity, on the other hand, will only make up just over a third of emissions. Without radical action to decarbonise heat, we won’t get anywhere near the 2050 target.
Posted in climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon on February 2, 2009| 9 Comments »
Sounds crazy but it’s true.
Here’s a graph I put together showing the number of houses of various ages up to 2050. It clearly shows that, using current demolition rates, the vast majority of the homes in use in 2050 have already been built. Details on how I put the graph together can be found in a previous post.
Posted in energy, engineering, renewable energy, wind turbines, tagged BWEA, Encraft, micro-wind, small wind turbines on January 14, 2009| 3 Comments »
According to the Guardian, most domestic turbines are only generating 5-10% of the manufacturers’ claims. Dramatic stuff but maybe not a huge surprise. I think there’s been a growing realisation among professionals in the built environment that small wind in built up areas rarely works.
But it’s important to remember that in most cases this poor performance is not the fault of the turbines themselves; they’ve just been placed badly by designers and over-hyped by manufacturers.
Located somewhere with decent wind (on the back of a sailboat, on top of a tall mast on a windy hill, etc) they’ll do the job. But bolted to the chimney of a Victorian semi in Surbiton? Almost definitely not. Even Ashenden House, a 13-storey tower in Elephant and Castle, hasn’t proved to be a salubrious place for turbines.
So blame the engineers and architects, blame manufacturers for short-sightedly over-hyping their own products, but don’t blame the turbines. It would be a mistake if we were to dismiss the technology as a result. Small wind still has an important role to play, even if that role is more limited than many people hoped.
Posted in biomass, chp, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, private wire, renewable energy, SAP, sustainability, wind turbines, zero carbon, tagged zero carbon consultation on January 8, 2009| 2 Comments »
From the zero carbon consultation, you can see that CLG has accepted that we need to resolve the onsite / offsite question. They have also moved away from the requirement for private wire networks or “direct connections” between generators and homes since it caused all sorts of problems.
So positive moves from CLG, but there is still a huge amount of confusion over what onsite and offsite actually mean. This is a crucial issue since only onsite energy will count towards carbon compliance, while offsite energy is only likely to count as an allowable solution.
Posted in Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, private wire, renewable energy, SAP, stamp duty exemption, sustainability, zero carbon, tagged CLG, zero carbon consultation on December 30, 2008| 3 Comments »
In case you don’t fancy wading through it, this is a brief summary of the zero carbon consultation doc. While nothing will be finalised until next summer (after they’ve ruminated over the responses), the document does give some insight into the way CLG is leaning on some issues.
At the core of the document is the government’s preferred framework for reaching zero carbon. In order of priority:
| Why Ofgem must stick… on how many old homes will get he… | |
 | Marko Cosic on Testing, testing |
| Martin Winlow on the myth of stone walls as… | |
| Martin Winlow on the myth of stone walls as… | |
 | Martin Winlow on the myth of stone walls as… |
 | AlanDHill@hotmail.co… on the myth of stone walls as… |
| Comment: What would… on why we’ll share Open… |
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