The Energy Transition | Public sector buildings to receive green upgrades and Energy Network Association's flexibility consultation
Published on 8th Aug 2022
This week we look at £635 million of government funding for green upgrades to public sector buildings, the Energy Network Association's consultation on the flexibility market, £54 million of government funding for district heat network projects and more.
Government announces £635 million grant for green upgrades to public sector buildings
The government has confirmed that up to £635 million of funding will be made available to help provide green upgrades to public sector buildings. Public sector organisations such as local authorities will be able to apply for a share of the funding from September 2022.
Hundreds of schools, hospitals, leisure centres, town halls and other public buildings will benefit from the funding, with the money expected to be spent on installing low carbon heating, such as heat pumps, and energy efficiency measures, such as double glazing and loft insulation. These upgrades will allow organisations to decrease their reliance on fossil fuels which is a crucial step in the transition to a greener energy system. The switch to renewable energy will also prove cost effective given the increasing pressures on, and price volatility of, global energy markets. Benefits from the funding are expected to flow down to taxpayer level as a result of reduced heating costs for these buildings, with public sector bodies and taxpayers predicted to save an average of £650 million per year on energy bills over the next 15 years.
The funding forms the second limb of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, a £1.425 billion project launched by the government in October 2020. The PSDS is run in partnership with Salix Finance, a company providing interest-free government funding to the public sector to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. This round of funding aims to support the reduction of emissions from public sector buildings by 75% by 2037, compared to a 2017 baseline. Projects that have already received funding under the Scheme include two hospitals in Nottingham, various primary schools and child day care centres in Leeds and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.
Business and Energy Minister, Lord Callanan, has said: "We are already delivering upgrades to hundreds of public buildings across England, making them cheaper to run and saving taxpayers millions of pounds each year. By helping even more public sector bodies ditch costly fossil fuels, we are taking an important step towards a more sustainable future while driving economic growth across the country and continuing to support tens of thousands of jobs."
Energy Network Association launch consultation on the future of the flexibility market
The Energy Network Association (ENA), the industry body representing transmission and distribution owners and operators across the UK, has launched a wide reaching consultation on the future of the flexibility market. The consultation is run by ENA's Open Networks Project, a programme designed to drive the transition to a smart and flexible energy system and prepare networks for net zero, and seeks views on how to further develop the processes that underpin the UK's flexibility market.
The consultation follows a record breaking year in the flexibility market, with figures released by the ENA showing that 3.7GW of distribution network flexibility has been tendered in the last 12 months. This marks a 31% and 75% increase from 2021 and 2020 respectively. As the proportion of the UK's electricity generated from renewable sources continues to increase, the way in which the energy system operates must undergo a series of changes. The majority of renewable electricity generated is intermittent, causing challenges to the effective balancing of supply and demand on the grid. Flexibility can help ease these challenges and the Open Networks Project is driving the developments needed to support and grow such flexibility.
The consultation is open for six weeks with responses due by 12 September 2022. During the course of the six week consultation period, the ENA are also running two public webinars: the first, on 16 August 2022, will provide an in-depth overview of all areas of the consultation; and the second, on 24 August 2022, will be a panel discussion, titled "A smart, flexible grid: what does it mean for you and your organisation?". An online workshop for Community Energy representatives will also take place on 8 September 2022 as an opportunity for the ENA to answer questions on the consultation.
The Head of Innovation at the ENA, Randolph Brazier, has commented: “This consultation will give flexibility providers the opportunity to feed back to the networks on the framework we’re building for them. The standards we’re creating are world-leading; they allow for flexibility providers of all types to more easily offer their services consistently across the country. In doing so they create a competitive marketplace, driving down prices all whilst directly enabling more renewable power to be built-out”.
Government announces £54 million funding for district heat network projects
The government has awarded over £54 million in funding to four innovative heat network projects in England to facilitate the use of low-carbon heat technologies in homes and businesses. This funding will enable the supply of clean energy to almost 28,000 properties in England, which the government hopes will reduce energy bills and boost the UK's energy independence.
A heat network refers to a distribution system made up of insulated pipes that deliver heat from a central source, including large-scale heat pumps or energy from waste projects, to multiple properties. Heat networks are able to help households and workspaces move away from expensive fossil fuels by providing access to otherwise inaccessible large-scale renewable and recovered heat sources. Heating homes and workspaces accounts for almost a third of all UK carbon emissions, and these four projects could result in annual carbon savings equivalent to removing 5,500 cars from the road.
£27.8 million has been awarded to Haringey London Borough Council for two projects which, once fully built out, will supply heat to a total of almost 10,000 homes. The remining two projects receiving funding include a Woking based project to expand an existing heat network which supplies heat to the public sector, and a project in Bedfordshire to develop a heat network using waste heat to which 12,000 homes and non-domestic buildings will eventually be connected.
Business and Energy Minister, Lord Callanan, said: "These projects will transform how tens of thousands of households and businesses keep their properties warm. By investing in cutting-edge low-carbon heating technologies we are helping to secure a lasting move away from using fossil fuels and protecting consumers from the costs that are driving up energy bills at a time of high global prices."
Bioenergy innovation projects allocated £37 million of government funding
The government has announced £37 million of new funding to drive plans to grow domestic renewable energy from biomass. Under Phase 2 of the Biomass Feedstocks Innovation Programme, 12 projects are receiving a total of £32 million of funding to identify new ways to increase biomass production in the UK. The remaining £5 million is being allocated to 22 projects through Phase 1 of the Hydrogen BECCS programme to help develop innovative technologies that produce hydrogen from sustainable biomass and waste.
Biomass refers to plant material that can be used to produce biofuels for transport or to generate electricity. Biomass has already delivered electricity at scale, having generated 12.6% of the UK's total electricity in 2020. Biomass therefore forms an important part of the government's plans to increase generation of home-grown power. Biomass gasification with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technologies are also being explored as a cleaner means of producing hydrogen.
Successful biomass projects include a microalgae project for which over £2.8 million has been allocated to develop new techniques to farm and harvest seaweed, and the 'Miscanspeed' project which aims to accelerate the breeding of high-yielding, resilient miscanthus (elephant grass), which has been granted around £2 million. Meanwhile £220,000 has been awarded to the University of Aberdeen for the development of an innovative process to produce hydrogen from the organic matter found in waste. The 22 winners of Phase 1 of the Hydrogen BECCS programme will be able to apply for further funding in Phase 2.
