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Archive for the ‘utilities’ Category

heat meters are a no-brainer

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, sustainability, uncategorized, utilities on April 10, 2008| 10 Comments »

At work I’m helping a large housing association upgrade their existing heating networks to save carbon and reduce costs to occupants. There are various steps to take: upgrading boilers, re-insulating distribution pipework, considering CHP, and so on. But the single most effective thing you can do on these schemes is to install heat meters.

Doing some background research, I rang up the very friendly and forthcoming Dick Bradford, the driving force behind the hugely successful biomass community heating schemes in Barnsley, to ask him what effect installing heat meters had had on his schemes. He told me that following the installation of heat meters, heat consumption dropped by 50%. I was gobsmacked.

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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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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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Greenpeace model town

Posted in biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , on February 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Greenpeace has created their version of a model town, stitching together examples from all over the UK. It’s a very cool combination of flash pages with lots of case studies, animations, and videos. Worth a wander.

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ground source heat pumps not so green

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, heat pumps, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , on February 11, 2008| 12 Comments »

At first glance, the green credentials of ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) look unquestionable: because you’re harvesting free heat from the ground, you can get up to four times more energy out of the system than you put into it. Sure, it runs on electricity, which is more carbon intensive than gas, but because of this favourable ratio of output-to-input (called the COP for coefficient of performance) the system should still emit less carbon than a gas boiler – in theory.

But the claimed benefits are reliant on incorrect assumptions. A new house will emit about the same carbon using a ground source heat pump as with a new gas boiler. Here’s why:

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emissions from CHP: the standard method is wrong

Posted in chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, micro chp, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , , on February 4, 2008| 5 Comments »

[update March 20: I’ve looked further into how SAP treats CHP and written it up here. So while the method described below is being used elsewhere in the industry, the criticism doesn’t apply to SAP.] 

I’ve written on this topic before but maybe I didn’t succeed in making clear just how far off the mark the standard method is when estimating carbon emissions from CHP. Why does it matter? Here are some reasons:

  • Right now, big developers and the Housing Corp are assuming CHP can get them to level 4 under the Code for Sustainable Homes and this may not be true.
  • These emissions figures can determine whether or not a scheme gets planning permission or passes building regs.
  • The nascent micro-CHP industry (expected to be worth £2billion per year across Europe) is using this flawed method to back up its sustainability claims. Changing from a commonsense approach to the much more forgiving “standard” approach explains why the first Carbon Trust interim report on the micro-CHP field trails was so bleak and the second was so rosy.   

There’s a good chance that, if I’m right and the standard approach is flawed, when the CLG and BRE realise their mistake, the rules will change, leaving public and private sector developers and the micro-CHP industry with a very costly mess to clean up. (more…)

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new coal? you’re joking

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , , on January 4, 2008| 2 Comments »

If the government backs up Medway Council’s inane decision to allow a new coal fired power station in Kent, I’m going to pack it in. The superfluous runway at Heathrow is bad enough, but new coal? The squabbling we all do over saving a tonne of CO2 here and a tonne of CO2 there – and Gordon Brown is going to give us the first new coal plant in 30 years?

Seriously, I’m going to put my feet up, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe, and join the national guard. Who knows, I might even become the next prime minister.

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without action, the plan for zero carbon homes by 2016 will fail

Posted in architecture, chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, micro chp, renewable energy, stamp duty exemption, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , on January 3, 2008| 5 Comments »

The requirement for all homes to be zero carbon by 2016 is going to fail unless we take action now. In particular, a set of interim requirements under the Code for Sustainable Homes must be imposed on private housebuilders. In addition, the Code must allow more flexibility in how zero carbon is achieved.

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