The previous article on Decarbonising Heat summed up the National Infrastructure Commission’s study of the cost of different solutions to this problem. The most effective, but also the most expensive, was found to be the heat pump. This article will look into the pros and cons of heat pumps, and also into a solution that [...]
The National Infrastructure Commission was set up by the government in 2015 to give non-ministerial advice on the UK’s infrastructure. It monitors projects and produces studies, and is obliged to give an Assessment once every parliament of future needs. It has about 35 employees and a board who are mainly directors from industry or academics [...]
Heating has long been recognised as the most difficult area to decarbonise, so the announcement by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 11 April of a new scheme supporting heat networks was good news. The scheme will offer grants and loans to both public and private sectors, consumers and public buildings such [...]
On 9 January 2017, Greenbarrel published a Waste to Energy article, asking a specific question: “What do they do in Paris?” We are told that mainland Europe is showing its prowess when it comes to community heating schemes and that many people wonder why that sort of scheme hasn’t taken off here in the way [...]
Increasing the use of Renewables in Heating (and transport) is more complicated than increasing its use in electricity generation. That is implicitly recognized in the targets the EU has set for 2020. They envisage that 30 per cent of electricity will be generated from wind, solar and other low-carbon sources, but only 12 per cent [...]
The most counter-intuitive of all the types of renewable energy is probably the exploitation of the heat to be found at relatively shallow depths in the earth. While it appears natural to think of harnessing water, the wind, the heat from the sun, or even the heat from volcanoes, a certain leap of the imagination [...]
This is the first in a series of articles about the use of geothermal energy to produce electrical power and heating In these days of heightened awareness of de-carbonisation and global warming it is interesting to note that the world is probably only tapping six or maybe seven per cent of all the global geothermal [...]
Ene.field, a community of users, installers and manufacturers led by the EU-backed European Association for the Promotion of Co-Generation, has reported on its 5-year project to analyse the viability of micro Combined Heat and Power Systems based on fuel cells (FCmCHP). One thousand systems were installed in residences across Europe and their performance measured over [...]
Leeds H21 City Gate is the project led by the Northern Gas Network (NGN) to change the network in the Greater Leeds area from natural gas to hydrogen by 2029. It is seen as a feasibility project for a future hydrogen economy. In a talk at an Oxford Energy colloquium on January 24 Dan Sadler [...]
In London, the responsibility for heating rests on individual arrangements with the various gas and electricity companies, while it is the boroughs which are responsible for providing local waste and recycling collections and the subsequent treatment of the waste. In terms of coverall coordination, the operations of the boroughs merely have to be “in general [...]