DECC strategy marks an important development for UK community energy

Posted on by Colin Nolden — No Comments ↓

The Community Energy Strategy  marks an important step in the development of community energy in the UK that should not be underestimated. It is the first of its kind ever to be published in the UK and it sets out the role of communities in the UK’s energy and climate response.

To date, the role of communities in energy generation, demand reduction, energy management and energy purchasing has been ill-defined and this report has clearly involved a lot of consultation and analysis to help rectify these shortfalls. Following the concession that ‘much of DECC’s focus has been to help deliver large national infrastructure projects’ it sets out its ambition ‘that every community that wants to form an energy group or take forward an energy project should be able to do so, regardless of background or location.’ This broad approach to community energy includes partnerships, capacity and capability building, measuring impact, electricity generation, heat generation, reducing energy use, managing energy demand and purchasing energy. Specifically, issues regarding renewable electricity generation, district heating, training programmes, local authority collaboration, energy-saving programmes and energy poverty alleviation are analysed and strategies developed accordingly.

On closer analysis it is evident that some of these areas are already integrated into the existing energy policy framework while others require support and development outside the realm of energy policy. Community electricity generation in particular is an area that has seen considerable growth in recent years and DECC states that over 60MW of generation capacity is currently in operation with solar PV and onshore wind the most prevalent technologies. This is also an area where DECC is willing to provide tentative suggestions regarding sector development. Depending on the scenario, community energy could provide between 0.5GW and 3GW of installed capacity through solar PV, onshore wind and hydro, representing between 2.2% and 14% of total capacity of these technologies and generating between 0.3% and 1.4% of the UK’s entire electricity consumption in 2020. Crucially, this would not present additional generation capacity but rather a shift in the ownership model from commercial developers to communities (at the large scale) and from individual household-level generation to community ownership models (at the small scale).

The strategy places strong emphasis on greater scales of technological deployment through partial-ownership and joint ventures with commercial developers. Over 50% of the potential community capacity, not only for electricity but for energy generation in general may be delivered using shared ownership models and would see investment rise to £320m, potentially £1.5bn by 2020. It is also expected that by 2015 it will be the norm for interested communities to be offered some level of ownership of new, commercially developed onshore renewable projects. A further important development regarding finance and up-scaling would be the proposed expansion of the Green Investment Bank’s approved scope of operation to include the provision of wholesale finance to community energy groups. Informal discussions with the European Commission regarding state aid implications are underway. An increase of the maximum capacity for community projects eligible for feed-in tariffs from 5MW to 10MW is also proposed in the hope that it will remove ‘the perverse incentive for community groups to limit their electricity generation projects to 5MW.’ Working groups are set to bring together regulators and industry to produce action plans in 2014 to tackle issues communities face regarding planning and permitting, electricity network connections and hydropower.

If these issues can be resolved and the plans are to be realised the combined effect of launching the £10m Urban Community Energy Fund to complement the £15m Rural Community Energy Fund and the quadrupling of the Green Deal Communities scheme to £80m should provide a significant and concerted effort towards community energy development in the UK. These ambitions are underlined by the ‘one-stop-shop’ new Community Energy Unit in DECC.

Despite all these positive aspects, however, the wider UK energy policy framework that has started to emerge in recent months places some question marks over the direction and role of community energy within the wider framework of decarbonisation and energy system transformation.

For instance, rather than setting ambitious targets such as Scotland’s 500MW of renewables to be locally-owned or community owned by 2020, the report only indicates a clear level of ambition for community electricity generation. It also fails to provide details on what government is willing to do beyond the (very important) provision of funding streams, nor does it provide communities with a clear strategy for action. More fundamental questions also need consideration, particularly what helping ‘community energy realise its electricity generation potential’ implies in light of an ‘all out’ government commitment for shale gas and how the idea of challenging the Big 6 with the ‘Big 60,000’ fits in with guarantees provided to developers of nuclear power.

It appears as though the report has been published just in time to supress worries regarding the direction(s) that UK energy policy has recently taken but despite its well-intended rhetoric it remains vague concerning several important aspects. Less of a commitment towards ‘low carbon’ and greater emphasis on renewable energy technologies such as provided by the German, Danish and many of the UK community energy examples might have provided community energy development with a clearer direction. A greater commitment towards empowerment would also have cancelled out suspicions of community energy’s ‘additionality’ as opposed to a fundamentally different approach to centralised generation in the UK. An example of this is Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ which, at least according to the BMU, Germany’s equivalent of DECC, is proposed to be ‘a community and citizen project’.

Admittedly, direct country comparisons are difficult, a point also made clear in the Community Energy Strategy, and these arguments should not detract from the importance of this report for the development and expansion of community energy in the UK.

Dr Colin Nolden is a Research Fellow at the Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand (CIED) which is based in the Sussex Energy Group at The University of Sussex.

For more information on the work of CIED visit www.cied.ac.uk @ciedresearch

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EU 2030 Climate and Energy Package leaves unanswered questions

Posted on by Cian O-Donovan — No Comments ↓

The recent European Commission Communication on a 2030 climate and energy package is high Brussels compromise that falls short of two important goals. It has failed to bring clarity to the energy sector and done little to address concerns that there still exists a significant discrepancy between EU policy goals, and scientific estimates on temperature rises.

The communication has been widely covered in the media and by various commentators in recent days. The headline numbers are straightforward – By 2030 the EU should cut emissions to 40% below 1990 levels. Renewables should provide no less than 27% of EU energy supply. These numbers are something of a departure from the current 20/20/20 targets which call for a 20% reduction in European carbon dioxide emissions on 1990 levels, a contribution of 20% renewables to the energy system and a 20% energy efficiency improvement, all by 2020. Within these targets, the UK is obliged to increase the share of renewables in the energy mix to 15%. After 2020, that country specific requirement is now gone.

The incumbent policy regime, announced in 2007, was clear to specify renewables targets for individual countries. This time around the Commission takes a hands-off approach allowing member states set their own target and taking energy efficiency numbers off the negotiating board completely.

Notable amongst the immediate commentary on the Communication was the lack of clear narrative explaining the new numbers. It attempts something of a sleight of hand, declaring the 20/20/20 targets almost met. “Much has been achieved” and “the EU is now well on track”. Perhaps, but the Commission fails to answer a simple question; have the 20/20/20 targets worked? Have they delivered the greatest greenhouse gas emissions reduction at the lowest cost? In a Europe that since 2007 has suffered a crisis of growth, something of a crisis of identity, and certainly a crisis of confidence, the answer to that question remains unclear.

Commentators are uninspired. Greenpeace’s Ruth Davis yawns and goes back to bed arguing that ‘the minimum requirements remain the same: a 55% cut in carbon pollution, a reform of the ETS that will drive dirty fuels out of the system, and a renewables target that will drive down the costs of clean tech’. None of this is evident in the 2030 package.

Alex Marshall at the ENDS report calls some minor wins and losses in the negotiating phases with Poland and the UK scoring a minor victory over France and Germany in defeating a binding renewables target.

The Carbon Brief’s article by Mat Hope  describes the white paper as an “act of faith”, and wonders what the new targets will do for Europe’s renewables industry. He reports the European Wind Energy Association calling for more certainly and strong price signals for investors. Though as Europe’s renewables industry matures, cries like this come across as spoiled rent seekers demanding subsidies.  Hope also points out that many serious commentators had already raised concerns that a 40% target for 2030 was potentially too low to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial times. He usefully points readers to Kevin Anderson’s  (Tyndall Centre) instructive open letter to the Commission before Christmas where he expresses “serious concerns that the process for determining the EU’s 2030 decarbonisation target is being conducted in a vacuum of scientific evidence, and that the proposed target fails to quantify honestly the EU’s high-level statements and international obligations on climate change”.

Anderson rarely comes across as optimistic, in this case he states simply that anything less than an 80% cut in emissions by 2030 will blow open Europe’s commitment to keeping a 2100 temperature rise to under 2°C. If that is correct then while this 2030 climate and energy package is a step in the right direction it will fall far short of making any real impact on mitigating global warming.

Maybe the European Commission is keeping another 10% of emissions cuts promises in the negotiating bag to use as bait at COP 21 in Paris next year. A we’ll show you ours if you show us yours to the US, China, Australia and other big global emitters. That tactic failed in Copenhagen, surely that’s not a trick Commissioner Connie Hedegaard is going to get wrong twice?

Cian O’Donovan is a PhD candidate within the Sussex Energy Group based in SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) at The University of Sussex. He teaches on SEG’s Introduction to Climate Change Economics and Policy  module and can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/cian

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Highlights from the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium Launch Event

Posted on by Ralitsa Hiteva — No Comments ↓

Jim Watson

By Dr. Ralitsa Hiteva

I work as a Research Fellow for the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC). Fresh out of my PhD, this is my first post-doctoral research job and, having recently attended the launch event of the first comprehensive results of the ITRC modelling and appraisal activities, I am excited to see the importance and potential impact of my work. The objective of the ITRC is to inform the analysis, planning and design of national infrastructure, through the development and demonstration of new decision support tools. Working with partners in government and industry the research focuses on the interdependencies of energy, transport, water, waste, and information and communication technologies (ICT) systems at a national scale. The launch event was held at the Institution of Civil Engineers on Tuesday 14th January and was followed by a networking reception with industry stakeholders and people working for various national and local authorities.

The reason for the launch was a 104 page report which considers a proliferation of options (regulatory, technical etc.) for infrastructure provision until 2050. The analysis of energy supply and demand is the most extensive of all five sectors. One of the main messages – which although intuitive, still needs to be taken to heart by policy makers and industry – was that more expensive infrastructure produces the least amount of carbon dioxide emissions. However, the difference in investment levels between the least carbon intensive portfolios of strategies and the more carbon intensive ones is substantial. The minefield of trade-offs between different options across sectors can be illustrated by the relationship between natural gas and electricity. Low carbon strategies involved low levels of use of natural gas, while fuel switching was found to be key to achieving major reduction in carbon emissions, particularly in the residential and services sectors. The messages from the transport sector echoed those of energy and waste – that managing infrastructure demand until 2050 has to move beyond the strategy of predict and supply, and will require significant behavioural changes to reduce demand.

One of the speakers, Keith Clarke argued that the ITRC report is as important as the Stern report, because it is a first of its kind and because of the potential it has to influence policy making and planning for the next decade and beyond. The ITRC ambition is to enable a revolution in strategic and cross-cutting UK planning for the future.

My role in the project is to work with Professor Jim Watson to map and analyse the existing arrangements for governing infrastructure interdependency and making use of some international case studies (the EU, Smart Cities and South Korea) to discuss how these fit with the findings of the ITRC cross-sector analysis. One argument we are making is for an integrated approach to infrastructure interdependency , which considers the economic and security benefits of creating joint (sector) infrastructure – using existing infrastructure systems to roll out new and different types of infrastructure such as electricity and broadband – along with the production of vulnerability and uncertainty through infrastructure interdependency. However, the UK will need mechanisms to bring in a broader range of actors to facilitate infrastructure coordination.

For a young researcher this event was a launch for me as much as it was for the report. It strengthened my conviction that infrastructure is one of the most exciting areas of research in transitions studies, with immense impact potential for society, industry and policy makers. Behind the technical details of available technology (for example available software was highlighted as a building block of development of all critical types of infrastructure) and numbers (i.e. population growth), there were thick layers of cultural assumptions, embedded expectations and institutionalised behaviour. Infrastructure transitions are not going to be just about infrastructure but will be nested within parallel transitions in energy production and use; trade-offs between water and energy supply, energy and modes of travel and transportation; as well as how much we shop and what we throw away. The story which emerged from the cross sectoral analysis of the 5 ITRC sectors was one of radical change, not only of the type of ideas it was capable of accommodating but also of the type of researchers it was beckoning.

Ralitsa Hiteva is a Research Fellow in the Sussex Energy Group based in SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) at the University of Sussex.

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The CCC – lobbying or simply presenting the Inconvenient Truth?

Posted on by Florian Kern — No Comments ↓

Florian Kern, Co-Director of Sussex Energy Group.

Question: When is independent analysis and advice seen to be lobbying?

Answer: When it presents an ‘Inconvenient Truth’

I was prompted to consider this while reading a recent Endsreport article (14th January 2014) on the UK Government’s triennial review of the UK Committee on Climate Change. Despite a generally favourable review, concluding that the CCC should continue in its current form, there are some telling criticisms in Annex D which should be cause for concern to anyone that believes that the CCC should have the freedom to present its independent analysis free from political pressure. EndsReport highlights that Annex D shows that “nearly all” government departments think that the CCC ‘strays too close to lobbying when it provides advice to government, and is risking undermining its credibility’. Secondly, departments feel that the CCC ‘doesn’t take sufficient account of ‘politics’ in its advice… and how this might affect the feasibility of [its] recommendations’.

But can such criticism ever be levelled towards a body that was set up, through the 2008 Climate Change Act, to provide independent analysis and advice. There is a clear contradiction between these departmental criticisms and the overall conclusion that the CCC’s role should not change because “In [its] absence, the government would not receive the necessary advice on the levels of climate change targets and carbon budgets, or be held accountable by a credible body who are independent.” Perhaps this criticism is more reflective of the fact that the CCC has become politically inconvenient to some Government departments.

First we need to consider the political context for criticism of the CCC. While there was cross-party agreement on its role and goals when the 2008 Climate Change Act was passed, in recent years it has become subject to political debate. Some analysts even fear that the Climate Change Act itself might be under threat [1]. So far, the government has always accepted the carbon budgets as proposed by the CCC and so it is significant that the fourth budget is currently under review. The main concern of the Treasury is that that the UK should not act faster than other countries. This view is not necessarily shared by DECC but still leaves the UK position a long way from Tony Blair’s proclaimed global leadership on climate change.

While this context goes some way to explain why the comments were made both are problematic. Accusing the CCC of lobbying is absurd. It was set up to provide independent advice on the basis of evidence and its independent analysis of that evidence. It is meant to hold the government to account against its climate change targets, which is a political task. ‘Political’ in the sense that the CCC prioritises achieving climate change targets over other government ambitions or popularity. While there can be disagreement over a particular piece of analysis or certain projections, no analyst, to the best of my knowledge, has ever found a serious flaw in the CCC’s analysis. In fact the review itself states that the CCC has “raised the bar with respect to climate change analysis” and “this would not have happened if its functions remained inside DECC”. So if the problem is not with the evidence used or the analysis provided by the CCC, then the point about undermining its credibility seems to be more about losing credibility with government. Why? Perhaps because the CCC reports the ‘inconvenient truth’ that UK carbon budgets need to be strengthened and not weakened.

This leads me to my issue with the concern that the CCC is not taking ‘politics’ and ‘political feasibility’ into account. Surely, if it’s the mission of the CCC to provide independent analysis to help government achieve climate change targets, then its recommendations need to be based on what needs to be done and not what might be considered ‘feasible’ by the powers that be. The CCC does not have any decision- making powers and its budgets are merely recommendations, which need to be accepted by government. The judgment of what is feasible and what policies will be implemented is a key government task. Having the independent view of the CCC feed into public discussions is very important as it forces the government to explain the gap between what needs to be done and what is being done.

I am relieved to see that despite these concerns, the review finds overall that the CCC’s role should not change. It is therefore my hope that the CCC will continue its important work and will not bow to any political pressures since that would mean it giving up on its original mission. Mitigating dangerous climate change is too important for that.

1. Lockwood, M. (2013). “The political sustainability of climate policy: The case of the UK Climate Change Act.” Global Environmental Change 23(5): 1339-1348.

Dr Florian Kern is Co-Director of the Sussex Energy Group, SPRU-Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex

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