At last: the affordable solar house that makes a profit for residents

Glen Peters is a man with a mission to show how truly sustainable and affordable housing can be a solution to the housing crisis. Having made a good profit from a solar farm in his field (seen behind the house in the picture above) he's putting it to good use and demonstrating a new model for sustainable housing.

Working with a team of architects and designers he has produced a prototype two-storey detached three bedroomed house with a radical new take on passive house principles. Called Ty Solar (Solar House in Welsh) it is of timber frame construction and insulated with blown cellulose; and is potentially able to export more electricity to the grid than it consumes itself in a given year.

The larch used for the frame and cladding is sourced locally and assembled to specifications that are beyond those required by Building Regulations, giving it a Code for Sustainable Homes 5 rating (out of a maximum of 6). But this doesn't tell the whole story by any means.

By using recycled newsprint (the blown cellulose) as the only insulant around the entire building envelope and local timber, the house is locking up atmospheric carbon in its structure for an indefinite period, unlike buildings that use fossil fuel-based insulants that have emitted carbon during their manufacture.



The embodied energy of the house is therefore already very low, an important factor given that for normal buildings between 10 and 20% of their life-cycle energy consumption is used during the phase of extraction of raw materials and construction.

The final purchase price has been set at a maximum of £75,000. The principal watchword throughout the design process that has enabled this to be possible has been simplicity.

Almost heretically for passive house construction it eschews ventilation and heat recovery, and the only source of energy is solar: both passive solar through the abundance of south-facing windows and active through reliance on solar photovoltaic panels for electricity and top-up space and domestic water heating.

The demonstration house includes lithium iron batteries to store 12 kWh of power but is also grid connected to enable the export of unused electricity and the use of the grid as a backup at other times.

The battery bank is optional and really only for stand-alone houses. Glen says: “A group of 10 or more houses generating in tandem with a local smart grid could form a miniature power station and generate a considerable income, perhaps £1000 per year, for each of the households, or the power could be used to charge electric vehicles which could be shared between them."

Research commissioned by the Welsh Government estimates that over 14,000 new homes are needed every year in Wales for the next 15 years.

The hunger for affordable housing is reflected in lengthy waiting lists and increasing official homelessness figures. Wales' Minister for sustainable development has made the provision of affordable housing a high priority during his tenure.

All of this highlights the urgent need for houses of this nature. As Glen Peters says: "The bulk housing providers in the construction industry are ignoring affordable housing. They say that it doesn't work for them. I say they are missing a trick. We've proved it is perfectly possible to build low carbon housing that is truly affordable and that gives occupants zero energy bills."

With energy bills so high on the public agenda it is hard to see how local authorities and housing associations can ignore the potential that this house demonstrates.

Low embodied energy

This successful and attractive-looking house goes against the grain in terms of many of the current developments in sustainable housing.

Compared to the Mark Group's demonstration house in Nottingham, BRE’s ‘Smart Home’, in Watford, and Velux’ CarbonLight demonstration home in Rothwell near Kettering, it scores very favorably on local sourcing, embodied energy, embodied carbon and simplicity of use. Above all it compares well on price.

All of these three supposedly cutting-edge demonstration homes contain extreme amounts of technology and sophisticated materials.

They represent corporate attempts to capture a high-end market in low or zero carbon housing.

The first utilizes an incredibly energy intensive over specified steel frame.

The second uses occupation sensors to control heating, lighting, ventilation, water and security, as well as heat pumps, solar thermal and PV.

The third is designed to be iconic in its extremely unusual shape and therefore expensive to reproduce. All of them make heavy use of smart electronics. And this is what puts up their price.

But although they may score highly on low operational energy use this does not make them necessarily sustainable.

The real target of sustainable housing should be overall life-cycle impact. This means that in fact small homes that are zero carbon in operation, whose materials are sourced locally and are of low embodied energy, preferably built in bulk and perhaps in a compact urban terrace or block, will be inherently more sustainable than stand-alone large homes packed with different technologies and comprising a high embodied energy.

This makes Ty Solar's closest antecedent perhaps the ecological evolution of Walter Segal Method timber frame construction, as pioneered at the Centre for Alternative Technology. The Segal Method was, pointedly, devised by its architect to produce affordable homes.

Even the low pitch of the roof is designed to minimize the heated but unnecessary interior loft space and increased requirement for materials that are result of higher pitched roofs, while still permitting the solar panels which the roof supports to take advantage of solar radiation.

The larch cladding will protect the building for years to come with minimum need for maintenance. The fact that it is screwed on in panels also makes it easier to access the interior of the walls if needed.

The Passivhaus certified windows and doors are even made locally rather than in Germany.

The house sits on footings raised slightly above the ground to remove the need for unnecessary concrete in foundations.

“Gareth, Jens and I come from very different worlds but we're united in our goal to be a disruptive influence of traditional thinking about building homes. In this, manufacturing becomes a key component and we see ourselves as manufacturers rather than builders,” says Glen. “We have created a lot of goodwill in our community and hope to continue to do so as we expand, creating local jobs, sourcing locally and above all keeping things small."

The test is whether day-to-day the homes do result in their occupants reducing their energy use and bills. This depends on their habits.

To this end simple controls will be easier to manage (see picture above right).

Some developers seem to believe that the occupants need a degree in energy management in order to keep down their running energy and carbon costs. Utility rooms contain a bank of sails and buttons worthy of the cockpit of the Star Ship Enterprise.

Ty Solar, by contrast, scores highly on ease of use since ventilation is controlled just by opening windows when required, and space and water heating is controlled in the traditional way, with thermostats. There are no other controls.

The house has not been formally tested for Passivhaus criteria, nor does it mean to be. It has also yet to be independently pressure tested.

It is a trial house that will be monitored for one year. However, with two floors each of 44.16 square meters and a volume of 254 m³ it has achieved a SAP rated figure of 0.12 air changes per hour.

This compares very favorably to the Passivhaus standard of 0.6 a change as per hour or a permeability rate of 3.0 m³/m²h. Over a 200-day heating period, a typical British house with eight air changes per hour and a 100m2 floor area, heated to 20°C, will cost thirty times more to heat than an equivalent house with 0.3 air changes per hour, according to an energy calculator (SIGA). The SAP-rated space heating requirement of this house is just 32.39kWh/m²/year.

This high performance is shown by the U-values, which are as follows:

Element	Average / Highest W/m2K	Maximum permitted W/m2K	Passivhaus standard
External wall	0.13	0.30	0.25–0.16
Floor	0.13	0.25	0.18–0.12
Roof	0.14	0.20	0.13–0.09
Openings	0.90	2.00	0.85

It can therefore be seen that the house, according to the SAP ratings, compares favourably with Passivhaus.

LED lights are fitted throughout, making the annual lighting consumption just 371.49kWh. With no pumps or fans, there are no further electricity requirements over and above that which is used in day-to-day living by a family in any home – for appliances and gadgets. It is therefore predicted by the SAP rating to have a negative energy use of -3253.56kWh (minus appliance use) and negative carbon dioxide emissions of -596.92 kg/year.

All of this means that the Energy Efficiency Rating on the EPC goes off the scale at 107, with an Environmental Impact (CO²) rating of 108. In the Code for Sustainable Homes assessment it reaches Level 5. The SAP Assessment also predicts that there will be only a medium likelihood of a high internal temperature, or overheating, in July and August, which can easily be catered for by opening the windows.

"We've just bought a 400m² cow shed to convert into our factory so we intend to minimize the impact on the land. We turned down offers of a brand new shed on a business park,” adds Glen.

Future houses could be semi-detached or terraced, and have one, two or three bedrooms, as demand dictates and housing associations or local authorities wish.

Clearly, Glen Peters is a man with an eye on the future - a sustainable future.

It’s not Utopian: 100% renewable electricity is here

Two questions for you: how many countries in the world source their electricity 100% from renewable sources? And which major European nation that is well-endowed with renewable energy resources, is the worst at exploiting them?

The answers can be gleaned from the recently updated International Energy Statistics of Electricity Generation from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy.

The sources of the statistics are many, from most countries in the world, and not necessarily directly comparable, but have been homogenised as far as possible to make them so. The figures are up to date to 2011, and in some cases 2012.

It's often said by opponents of renewable energy that too much of it is a bad thing: it results in unreliable supplies of electricity. How come, then, several countries source most of their electricity from renewable energy, and two rely on it 100%?

These two countries are Norway and Iceland. Iceland has been at it since 1980. Admittedly it's a tiny country, and is well-blessed with hydropower and geothermal, which provide 74% and 26% of the electricity respectively.

Norway, with a larger population of 5 million, has also been running almost exclusively on renewable hydroelectricity since 1980. However it also has recently added other renewables, wind and biomass (1.5%).

Another country to rely, perhaps bizarrely, on hydroelectricity is Portugal. Because of periodic droughts, the proportion of its contribution to overall electricity supply varies from year to year from between 38% and 58%. As a result, it has invested massively in wind power and now nearly one fifth the Portuguese electricity is from this source. Surprisingly solar contributed in 2012 under 1%, but biomass generated 5%.

Other countries also rely heavily on renewables. Denmark uses renewable sources for 45% of its energy: wind (30%) and biomass (15%). Spain provided its 47 million people with 31% renewable electricity in 2011. Italy, with 60 million inhabitants, now sources 17% of its electricity renewably. Germany is on 19%. France, 16%. Even the United States is higher than you-know-who at 12.7% (unfortunately, down from 1983 when it was 14.1%).

You-know-who is, of course, the UK, whose total renewable contribution is just 10%.

Britain has been developing wind energy and wave energy longer than France. Yet it has a pitiful proportion of renewables compared to other European countries.

The fault has been the unwieldy architecture of the Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation and its successor, the Renewables Obligation system, which kept small players out of the market and ensured the dominance of big companies and sluggish progress, coupled, more recently, with political dithering.

The Energy Bill offers a great chance to alter this, yet it, too, has been widely condemned as being far too complicated and under-ambitious, especially now that a decarbonisation target is not included.

The EIA figures also show that the United Kingdom ranks 10th in the world for emission of greenhouse gases, being responsible for 1.6% of global emissions from primary fossil fuel consumption for electricity generation.

Britain can, clearly, do far better, never mind all the party political wrangling over support for green technologies. If other countries can do it, so can we.

As author and commentator Paul Gipe says: "the challenge has never been technical. The problem has always been a political desire for a high percentage of renewable energy in a nation's generating mix, and the consistent implementation of policies that work".

Some form of feed-in tariff, the evidence shows from international comparisons, with targeted and consistent support for selected technologies, clearly works to the benefit of those countries implementing it.

Britain is blessed with a huge amount of wind, tidal and marine current energy. There is also a plentiful source of organic material for anaerobic digestion, and solar thermal has always been popular on a small scale. Meanwhile, there is plenty of potential for demand reduction.

Could Britain achieve 100% renewable energy?

A 2011 PriceWaterhouseCooperscenario for 100% renewable electricity recommended that Europe work together to most cost-effectively achieve the magic 100% figure, by setting up a pan-Continental high voltage direct current grid, linked to north Africa, where large solar farms could make up the difference between what countries can generate on their own and their total needs, which would, by then, have been reduced using demand management and energy efficiency.

Another scenario leading up to 2050, produced by WWF/Ecofys, foresees demand reduction, the smart grid, heat pumps, wind, solar, marine, hydro, geothermal and biomass energy as all part of a shared mix.

Zero CarbonBritain is to launch on June 17 at the Houses of Parliament a third version of its roadmap to 100% renewable electricity for the UK by 2030. Its angle includes additional land-use and lifestyle changes.

There have been several other scenarios for achieving the same target from other organisations such as Greenpeace, the European Renewable Energy Foundation and the University of Oxford.

But despite this excellent advice, British energy policy seems to be lurching in the opposite direction. The Government's current enthusiasm, demonstrated by Energy Minister Michael Fallon last week, for shale gas, is another diversion from what should be a complete decarbonisation commitment.

As Greenpeace energy campaigner Lawrence Carter said: "The Government is pandering to climate sceptic backbenchers like Peter Lilley. With everyone from Ofgem to Deutsche Bank to the Secretary of State for Energy agreeing UK shale gas won’t bring down bills, fracking could end up being a lot of pain."

The appointment of George Eustice as David Cameron's new energy and climate change advisor to the Conservative Parliamentary Advisory Board (CPAB) is also seemingly a step in the wrong direction to appease certain Tory backbenchers. He has talked of the "blight" of onshore windfarms, although he is a supporter of marine energy. At least Peter Lilley was not appointed, as was first touted: he has interests in Tethys Petroleum oil exploration company.

Nor was Lilley appointed to be chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee following Yeo's resignation: it is Sir Robert Smith, who, (where Yeo had investments in green energy) has investments in Shell, the oil company with the worst environmental record, and Rio Tinto Zinc.

With the latest news on climate change being utterly depressing, all the stops need to come out to decarbonise our energy supply.

Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Spain and all these other European countries show that it is possible to do so. They are all out-classing Britain.

A bright future, full of jobs and export potential, with far less global upheaval caused by climate chaos awaits us, if only the political will was there.

The case for the Severn tidal barrage must be improved

Former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, MP for Neath near Swansea, has given MPs an enthusiastic account of the proposed design by Hafren Power for a tidal barrage across the Severn estuary twice recently.

The first time was in the Commons debate on the Energy Bill and the second was last Thursday in front of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, which is pursuing an enquiry into the scheme.

I have to declare an interest here: I was commissioned to help write a document advocating the advantages of the scheme at an early stage.

I think it is a very exciting project. But at the same time I want to see any negative environmental effects of the scheme minimised.

It's now well known that this is a completely different proposition from the previous tidal barrage proposal that was rejected in 2010.

For example, it is claimed that the turbines are fish friendly, because they operate at a lower speed, enabling fish to swim both ways through them.

These new turbines will also work on the ebb and flow of the tide, meaning they can generate power 24/7.

Peter Hain told the Committee that the developers, Hafren Power, are prepared to settle for a strike price for the electricity generated that is the same as that received by offshore wind under contracts for difference (CfD). That, if true, is very reasonable.

The claim by the developers is that it will generate 5% of the UK's electricity needs, about the same as three new nuclear power stations and 7,000 wind turbines.

But it will last a lot longer. Like any hydroelectric scheme, it will last for up to 120 years, possibly more, and for most of its life it will therefore produce electricity 75% cheaper than coal or gas. Another considerable advantage.

No Treasury (taxpayers') money will be required to help finance it. However, it will use up a considerable amount of the Levy Control Framework. DECC has already indicated that this could be a concern for other low carbon technologies, for which little money would be left. Why put all one's eggs in one project basket?

The developers claim that the project will remove the need for millions of pounds worth of flood defences being built, because in itself it will protect much of the area from the risk of sea level rise and storm surges. They have even offered to build a Bridgwater bund to protect the Somerset Levels, which are very vulnerable.

However, this money saved cannot be offset against the Levy Control Framework, which is passed on to electricity consumers. There is no way to compensate them for the money saved from not spending on flood defences.

Nor has Hafren demonstrated that the project will protect areas upstream of the barrage from floodwaters coming down river.

It claims that it will generate 50,000 jobs, and on this basis it has won the support of Martin Mansfield, General Secretary of the Welsh TUC and Andy Richards, Wales Secretary for the Unite Union. However there is no supporting evidence explaining how so many jobs can be created.

The Angling Trust is adamant that the technology as so far presented to it is not safe for fish. Other conservation groups equally remain to be convinced.

The Habitats Directive requires that any designated ecology threatened by development must be compensated for elsewhere. In order to comply, the estuary would have to be stripped of its special status by application to the European Commission, a process which could take years due to the scientific evidence that would need to be collected and the natural inertia of the Commission.

Hain, in giving his evidence, was bending over backwards to help appease these objections. The man is staking his reputation as an MP on a private company's single project.

It would be tragic if a perfectly good opportunity to tackle climate change, energy security, promote renewable energy and stimulate the economy to the extent that this project has the potential to, were to be scuppered by the traditional, knee-jerk, objections of the traditional wing of the conservation movement.

After all, it is projected that between 10 and 20% of the habitat within the Severn estuary will be lost due to climate change and other factors anyway, in the future. The barrage proposal claims that 25% will be lost. This leaves a net loss of between 5 and 15%, which is perhaps not so significant when comparing to the environmental benefits.

The company has committed to engage with the Angling Trust, the RSPB and other conservation groups in developing the design. It has invited the Trust to test the turbine with them to see if it is a danger to fish. Together they can perhaps develop an even more fish friendly version of the turbine.

Similarly, a war has been growing between Bristol and Port Talbot ports over their mutual future viability, once the barrage is built, and employment prospects. They need to talk to each other and engage with the project to make sure that everyone benefits and no one loses out.

The project also has the potential to divide the south-west from South Wales, over competition for jobs. Developers must make sure that each side benefits here too.

This is a project with such potentially massive benefits that it cannot be dismissed easily. Its impacts will be correspondingly huge.

All big projects represent big change, and this scares people. They find it difficult to imagine what the finished product will be like and how it will affect the surrounding area.

All affected parties must therefore come together and explore it to see if together they can find a mutually acceptable solution.

It behoves Hafren to listen carefully to them all, to take their concerns on board and work with them.

All of this will take time. But it is the only environmentally and socially acceptable way to proceed.

Sir Branson and fellow entrepreneurs ask Cameron to back renewables

Sir Richard Branson is one of 102 top business signatories of an open letter to David Cameron urging him to back wind and other renewable forms of power generation.

“March’s budget provides one of the biggest opportunities to tackle climate change in the UK," the Virgin tycoon says. “We must ensure it encourages investment rather than creates uncertainty and delays further serious investment in the renewable sector. As a country we need to be better prepared to deal with rising energy prices.”

The so-called ‘102 letter’ is conceived partly as a response to the actions of 101 backbenchers who last month wrote to the Prime Minister attacking wind power, and a call to the Treasury to re-establish a stable investment platform for renewable energy as a driver of the recovery out of the recession.

It is published on the website of the Entrepreneurs' Organisation (EO), the global network of more than 7,500 business owners in 38 countries.

“Cutting support for green energy is a false economy," comments Dale Vince, Founder and CEO of Ecotricity, one of Britain's most successful new energy companies trying to muscle in on the territory controlled by the Big Six.

His angle is energy security. “Britain needs to become energy independent once more, and with the North Sea all but depleted of fossil fuels we need to look to other forms of indigenous energy. We have them in abundance, in the wind the sun and the sea, enough to power our country many times over.

“While Britain remains dependent on global energy markets, our bills can only go one way: upwards."

His analysis is that the level of current support for green energy sources is relatively small in comparison to that for oil and gas.

In the last 12 months roughly ￡30 of our household energy bills has been spent on green energy support. Of this, the Renewables Obligation (RO) added just ￡15.15 to the annual energy bill of the United Kingdom’s 26.3 million households, with onshore wind power adding only ￡4.68, according to Ofgem's recently published RO annual report for 2010/11 and Ecotricity's analysis.

The RO is the main support mechanism for encouraging the growth of renewable energy in the UK.

Meanwhile, the rising cost of imported gas added around ￡120 to energy bills last year, according to Ofgem's Electricity and Gas Supply Market Report.

"We need to reverse those proportions; it's an incredible false economy to throw money at energy market speculators while penny pinching over the one thing we can do to solve the problem long term: make our own energy,” concludes Mr Vince.

The letter says that “as entrepreneurs, investors, economists, scientists, engineers, energy providers, community builders and Members of Parliaments, we are increasingly concerned about the lack of clarity around the future of government support for land-based renewables, such as solar, wind and biogas."

Decentralised energy

They call for a “decentralised energy market" as a means of making the costs of upgrading the U.K.'s “antiquated infrastructure and transmission losses" more efficiently, Claiming it will “deliver savings for taxpayers and provide frustrated investors with new opportunities".

It wants the Government to guarantee “the broadest possible ownership of the U.K.'s next generation of energy infrastructure", perhaps copying the situation in Germany, where over half of all energy supply is owned by individuals and communities, and which, they say, has “delivered a 25% cost reduction".

The letter, also signed by financier Ben Goldsmith, calls on the new National Planning Policy Framework to “recognise the huge value of this approach", and for planning inspectors to take into account “our collective needs, both local and national", in building our future low carbon economy.

"In wind alone, the UK has more than 40% of Europe's renewable energy resources – enough to power up our economy three to four times over, generate exports, and provide the tools for communities and entrepreneurs to do their job," they write.

Juliet Davenport, the CEO of Good Energy, another new entrant into the energy market, calls for “a more inclusive approach to the way we invest in our energy infrastructure" to make it “a vehicle for both economic and social investment in communities, towns and regions across the UK”.

“If there is no stable platform for investment in renewables, we cannot expect to generate the backing or scale of innovation needed to make a sustainable difference," adds Howard Johns, Chair of the Solar Trade Association.

The letter follows one from former directors of Friends of the Earth sent on Tuesday, slamming Britain's support for nuclear power, owned by foreign companies.

Mr Cameron is not short of advice: authors and campaigners George Monbiot, Stephen Tindale, Fred Pearce, Michael Hanlon and Mark Lynas have also written to him this week in support of nuclear power, which they claim cannot be ignored.

They point out that Germany and Japan, in their attempts to do without nuclear power, are increasing their carbon emissions.

However, Jonathan Porritt and his colleagues do not call for the closing of nuclear power stations overnight in Britain; there is no need to substitute their current generation capacity with coal or gas.

Lynas and co. also claim that nuclear power is cheaper; at issue is whether cost estimates given for building new nuclear power stations and accounting for their decommissioning and the care of radioactive waste are verifiable and accurate.

The Chancellor will be addressing some of these issues on Tuesday; amongst his policy tools for supporting all low carbon forms of energy is the proposed feed-in tariffs with contracts for difference, as set out in the Government's Electricity Market Reform White Paper.

Investors will also be listening for any announcements concerning the Green Investment Bank.

World-beating €1.1bn under-sea cable to connect England and Scotland

The route of the Western HVDC Link

While politicians talk of Scottish independence from England, a world-beating €1.1 billion contract has today been announced to make the two countries even more interconnected.

The Western HVDC Link will be the first submarine grid interconnector ever that uses a high voltage direct current (HVDC), and is to join the Glasgow and Wirral areas along the bed of the Irish Sea. It is planned to be up and running by 2016.

No ordinary wire, this grid connection has two other firsts: it will be the longest 2,200MW capacity HVDC cable in the world, as well as the first to use a voltage level of 600kV (600,000 volts).

This will increase the link’s capacity and provide lower transmission losses.

The highest voltage level used to date has been 500 kV; Siemens says that raising the voltage level in the cable by 20% raises the amount of electrical capacity it can handle by the same amount, while still using the same diameter of copper in the cable, thereby reducing the cost of this expensive material.

Furthermore, the transmission losses over its 420 km will be reduced to below 3% (including cable and converter losses). A conventional 400-kv A.C. connector would lose about three times this amount.

The project has been commissioned by the National Grid Electricity Transmission and its counterpart Scottish Power Transmission from Italian cable company Prysmian and the German company Siemens Energy, to bring renewable energy from Scotland and the Irish Sea to help England meet its 2020 renewable targets.

The order comprises cable installation along the route and construction of converter stations in Hunterston, in Ayrshire, and Connah's Quay on the Wirral peninsula on the Wales-England border.

Ignacio Galán, Chairman of ScottishPower, said that the project should be seen "in the context of a vital upgrading of the UK electricity grid over the coming years, with the electricity grid between Scotland and England already running close to maximum capacity".

He said that ScottishPower expects to invest a total of ￡2.6 billion between 2013-2021 on upgrading its transmission network in the UK.

"Overall, we are projecting investments totalling ￡12 billion in the UK over the course of this decade, including major offshore wind projects around the country,” he added.

Nick Winser, Executive Director at National Grid said: “This link will have a vital role of play in helping to address the problem of climate change.

"We are investing in an innovative solution using the most advanced technology. The benefits for consumers and electricity generators in being able to transport power in the most efficient way, will be felt for years to come.”

Round 3 windfarms

The Western HVDC Link will support the planned expansion of renewables such as offshore wind and marine power at sites that are far away from loads and where the amount of electricity produced can be dependent on weather conditions.

It will therefore help to meet the consequent challenge of balancing power generation and consumption within the grid.

Underground or submarine cables lengths of 80 km or more are only possible with HVDC transmission technology because when A.C. lines reach this length the cable’s insulation serves as a capacitor and becomes charged, thereby absorbing most of the electricity.

Future wind farms will be far offshore due to the higher yield and because the near-coastal regions were already contracted out in rounds 1 and 2.

For round 3, with 32 GW of wind power, areas have been identified for wind farms that are between 40 and 200 km off the coast.

In the Irish Sea, the area is 'Zone 9', located between the Isle of Man and Anglesey.

"This order underscores our technological leadership in the HVDC field," said Udo Niehage, CEO of the Power Transmission Division of Siemens Energy.

“It will be the first subsea interconnector with a transmission capacity of 2200 megawatts – this equals the power output of two large-scale power plants,” he added.

The project was conceived in 2009 following an Electricity Network Strategy Group survey which identified a number of transmission reinforcements needed to enable renewable energy to be connected and secure the UK’s energy supplies.

Its report said the HVDC subsea link would be the most appropriate way to ensure that the additional energy generated in Scotland could be transmitted to the rest of Britain, because HVDC becomes more economic at longer distances.

Udo Niehage said that he foresees an expanding need for HVDC. “By 2020, I’m expecting to see new HVDC transmission lines with a total capacity of 250 gigawatts. That is a dramatic increase. In the last 40 years, we’ve only installed 100 gigawatts worth of HVDC transmission lines.

“Additional HVDC transmission projects will be awarded in Germany and Europe during this year.”

China, India, and Brazil in particular are also utilising the technology more and more, because their energy demand is growing rapidly and large distances must be bridged to ensure a supply of electricity from renewables projects.

Were your gadgets manufactured with renewable energy?

Major brands are backing initiatives to promote renewable energy, with the spotlight particularly on IT companies.

Motorola, Lego and Deutsche Bank are just three of the major brands to sign up to a new scheme that backs wind power.

Many other companies, too, are finding competitive advantage in promoting the fact that they source green energy, while those which do not are experiencing a public backlash.

WindMade is a new label that you might start seeing on products, that will signify that they have been manufactured using electricity generated by wind turbines.

It is being launched by Danish turbine-manufacturer Vestas, through a non-profit organisation, also called WindMade.

Its mission is to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy by appealing to supporters to favour those products bearing the label when making purchases.

“Any company that uses at least 25% of wind energy can adopt the “WindMade” label, a company that recognises companies that focus on using wind as a renewable energy source,” Bragi Fjalldal of WindMade explained.

In support of its mission, Vestas' marketing chief, Morten Albæk, quotes the results of a survey the company has commissioned: "67 percent of 31,000 consumers globally have told us they would favour WindMade™ products, even at a premium,” he says.

Deutsche Bank's Group Sustainability Officer, Sabine Miltner, says that they have joined the scheme because “we believe clean growth is good economics”.

She says that Deutsche is “committed to leveraging our core business expertise towards a cleaner and more energy efficient global economy", and that the bank believes "in leading by example".

Deutsche Bank has increased its use of clean electricity from 7% to 65% over the last four years.

She says that the "market transparency" afforded by the label is important.

Other brands are recognising this too, as a means of gaining competitive advantage.

Unfriend coal

The highly visible campaign to get Facebook to "unfriend coal" has been remarkably successful.

Stimulated by the fact that the company chose to power its first two self-owned data centres primarily with coal, the Greenpeace-backed campaign was started a year ago.

It celebrated on 27 October when Facebook’s spokesperson Michael Kirkland announced that it has chosen a site for its new data centre in Luleå, Sweden, which "will be the first Facebook data centre powered primarily by renewable power. It's a really important consideration for us".

Facebook has yet to release more information on exactly how the centre will be powered.

Recent research by Justin Ma and Barath Raghavan from the University of California, Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute, estimates that the internet consumes between 170 and 307 GW, or just under two percent of the entire world's electricity use.

Looking at the impact of the ubiquitous mobile phones and laptops they also estimated that a mobile requires 1GJ to manufacture and a laptop 4.5 GJ.

Yet the average smartphone is kept for just two years and the average laptop three years.

Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics surveys top IT companies' environmental performance each year. It still finds that most electronic gadgets are made using coal-fired generators.

Dell and Hewlett Packard are the best performing manufacturers, sharing a target to increase their use of renewable energy to 100 percent by 2020.

Apple, on the other hand, is not a green Apple, because it has no external verification of its energy use and no target to reduce emissions.

Sony has also earnt the ire of green campaigners for actually lobbying against stricter energy efficiency standards in California.

Google is another firm taking the issue seriously. Its electricity use was 25% renewable in 2010 and it has a target of 35% in 2012. The search engine is investing heavily in renewable electricity, especially solar power.

Google recently released the environmental footprint of several of its data centres and “cloud” services in the interests of transparency.

It says its motivation is "to enable users to hold their service providers accountable for minimising their environmental impact, as well as to manage their own footprint", and clearly sees a competitive advantage in doing so.

Other brands from many different sectors, from vehicles to white goods, are promoted on the Top Ten USA website, which lets users choose the most efficient products and save energy and money in running costs using (except for vehicles) the Energy Star logo.

Motorola has also pledged to begin taking advantage of renewable energy sources, promising to acquire at least 25% of its energy from wind, as part of the WindMade campaign.

Its director for sustainability and stewardship, Bill Olsonin, said part of Motorola's motivation for participating in WindMade was to encourage greater use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar around the globe.

Other WindMade corporate pioneers and founders are: Bloomberg, LEGO, PwC, DK, medical technology suppliers BD, personal care product provider Method, Better Place, which makes electric car infrastructure, hearing aid manufacturer Widex, advertising agency Droga5, solar company G24 Innovation, textile producer Engraw, HVAC maker RenewAire, and communication technology supplier TTTech.

Bloomberg's head of sustainability, Curtis Ravenel, commented on the WindMade initiative that “the supply side of the clean energy sector can clearly deliver, but now it is time to galvanise demand. It is now up to the corporate community to demonstrate leadership by committing to clean energy development. WindMade™ provides us with a roadmap for achieving this”.

Any company or organisation that procures and uses wind-generated electricity as part of their global operations can apply for a WindMade label for their operations.

WindMade's Technical Standard for Products will be released in 2012.

Renewable electricity touches 10% - and hardly affects energy prices

Wind, hydro and other renewables supplied 50% more electricity than in the same period last year, and now represent almost 10% of all electricity generated.

But there have been howls of protest from energy intensive industries, echoed by Goerge Osborne at the Tory Party Conference, that the cost of all the Government policies leading to this success is pushing up energy prices.

But the Government's own documents show this is not true.

Meanwhile, there is other good news in the latest quarterly energy figures, at least in terms of carbon emissions:

• electricity consumption was 1½% lower than in the second quarter of 2010


• fossil fuel dependency was at a record low of 85.7 %
.

• the supply from coal in the second quarter of 2011 fell 2.3%, gas decreased by 18.3% and nuclear rose by 38.3%


• in the second quarter of 2011 renewables accounted for 9.6% of electricity supplied, whilst nuclear supply exceeded 20% for the first time since the second quarter of 2006


• the total electricity supplied by all generators in the second quarter of 2011 was 1.7% lower than a year earlier


• final consumption of electricity for domestic use decreased by 3.7%.

This will all have the positive consequence of having reduced overall carbon emissions in the last year.

But prices have been rising. Average industrial gas prices, including the Climate Change Levy (CCL), were 34.1% higher in current terms in Q2 2011 compared to Q2 2010, whilst prices excluding CCL were 35.4% higher.

Average industrial electricity prices including CCL were 2.7% higher, coal prices were 11.9% higher, heavy fuel oil prices were 22.1% higher and the UK retail price for petrol was ranked sixth highest in the EU, with the UK diesel price the highest in the EU.

On the domestic front, electricity prices were 4.0% higher, domestic gas 6.2% higher and the price of heating oils a whopping 28.8% higher than Q2 2010.

Yet we can take some comfort that UK prices for medium domestic gas and electricity consumers, including tax, were the lowest and third lowest in the EU 15 respectively.

The cost of promoting low carbon energy

But is it true that a significant proportion of these price rises are due to Government policies to reduce carbon emissions?

Energy and climate change policies are funded by a mixture of levies and general taxation. Levy-funded policies (such as the renewables obligation (RO), feed-in tariffs (FITs) and warm home discount (WHD)) place the obligation of financing the policies onto energy companies which is then passed onto the consumer.

Estimates of how these levies impact the public finances were published in Budget 2011, and include for 2010-11 £0.7 billion from the Climate Change Levy and £0.6 billion from other environmental taxes, matched by a similar expenditure on these taxes.

The latest figures for the cost to the public purse for the development, construction and installation of low carbon electricity generation (latest figures) are as follows:

2009-10

The Renewables Obligation: £1.1 billion
R&D grants for renewable energy technologies: £90.1 million
R&D grants for nuclear related technologies: £35 million
Total: £1.225 billion

2011-12

R&D grants for anaerobic digestion technology: £1.3 million
Capital grants for renewable energy: £30.85 million
Feed-in tariffs: £10.7 million
Total: £42.8 million
(source: Parliamentary Answer by Charles Hendry, Minister of State for Renewable Energy, Energy and Climate Change, 15 Sept. 2011)

The Treasury of course keeps a cap on levy-funded spending by DECC.

DECC estimates that the impact of energy and climate change policies on average gas and electricity prices and bills paid by large energy intensive users compared with prices and bills in the absence of policies is a 2% rise this year rising to a 4% rise in 2020 for gas, and a 12%-20% rise this year and a 17% to 52% rise in 2020 for electricity.

This sounds like a lot. But, to put this into context, average electricity prices faced by large industrial users rose by a huge 45% in just two years between 2007 and 2009, largely as a result of volatile fossil fuel prices.

In addition, the wholesale fraction of the retail gas price faced by large energy intensive users (excluding the cost of carbon) is around 90%, and around 70% - 80% of the retail electricity price paid by these users.

Wholesale gas prices are expected to continue to rise, with forward market prices trading at 76p/therm in 2016.

The truth is that fossil fuel price volatility has been, and is expected to continue to be, a bigger driver of energy price variations than the impact of energy and climate change policies.

The proposals outlined in the Electricity Market Reform White Paper are supposed to mitigate the impacts of policies on prices and bills by reducing the costs of support for low carbon generation (compared with what the cost of the Renewable Obligation would have been in the absence of the EMR), reducing them by 2% in 2020 and 8% in 2030.

DECC makes the further point that looking at the effect on prices alone is misleading - it's the bills that count.

These will be lower in fact because of the effects of policies to encourage a reduction in consumption due to energy efficiency, which is greater than the effect on the bill from the increase cost per unit of retail gas (as a result of the Climate Change Levy).

Additionally, it is hoped that the introduction of a Carbon Price Floor (CPF) starting at £16/tCO2 in 2013 and rising to £30/tCO2 in 2020 and £70/tCO2 in 2030 will increase decarbonisation of the grid, and therefore improve price stability and increase energy security.

An updated assessment of the impact of energy and climate change policies on energy prices and bills for households and businesses and bills will be published alongside the Annual Energy Statement.

Around the same time the Government has committed to publishing details of its support for energy-intensive users.

So, if you're worried about high energy bills, the people who deserve the most blame are the fossil fuel suppliers, and there is no shortage of incentives and support to reduce the bills.

It's six months since the Fukushima nuclear disaster and Japan is charting a renewable energy future

This Sunday will be the six month anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, which is now emerging as being far worse than officials originally admitted. But in many parts of the world, including the UK, it has already slipped into distant memory, even as we remember the terrible events of 9/11/2001.

While the mainstream media has moved on - even in Tokyo itself - and there has been little reportage of developments in the area around the disaster, it is apparent that secrecy and cover-up continues to be endemic in the industry, and anger is widespread among survivors of the March 11 quake and tsunami disaster.

Almost six months after the catastrophe, tens of thousands of people still live in crowded shelters and temporary homes, many mourning loved ones, fearful of radiation, lacking information they can trust, and without jobs, homes or a clear idea about their future. 100,000 Fukushima Prefecture residents are still not able to return to their homes.

Some locations near the nuclear power plant are estimated to be contaminated with accumulated radiation doses of over 500 millisieverts a year, meaning return for residents is not likely to be imminent.

Shinji Sakuma, a farmer whose cows were slaughtered due to fears of radioactive contamination, is furious with the politicians he sees as "distant and disconnected from the reality of the disaster zone".

There is a 20-30km "stay indoors" zone around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, and schoolchildren are not allowed to play outside.

Within 50km, in a school in Koriyama, students are monitoring levels of radiation in the grounds, and finding pockets of high radiation where contaminated surface soil on the school premises was removed and buried.

Readings in the wider affected area of the level of radioactivity in the soil and sea show that three times as much iodine-131 and cesium-137 - 4,720 terabecquerels - was emitted than that formerly estimated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant operator.

Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, meaning that its radioactive emissions will decline only by half after 30 years and will affect the environment over several generations.

A soil expert from Tokyo university estimates that cancer or illness from Fukushima radiation will begin to show in 5-10 years. “This is a disaster affecting all residents of Japan”, he says.

A group of researchers from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Kyoto University and other institutes say that a total of 15,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances is estimated to have been released from the Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea, affecting fish and other sea-life.

Moreover the Japanese education ministry has released the first comprehensive survey of soil contamination within a 62-mile radius, showing that more than 30 locations spread over a wide area have been contaminated with cesium-137.

The survey of 2,200 locations - conducted in June and July - found that 33 had cesium-137 in excess of 1.48 million becquerels per square meter, the level set by the Soviet Union for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Japanese authorities said.

This prompted Mamoru Fujiwara, assistant professor of nuclear physics at Osaka University, to say that residents from these locations "need to be relocated permanently", but no decision has yet been taken.

Meanwhile, technicians are still struggling to bring the crippled reactors to a state of cold shutdown by January.

Japan's clean energy future

In the light of all this, Japan is likely to have no nuclear plants in the future, Japanese Industry Minister Yoshio Hachiro said this week, basing his statement on Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's policy of not building new nuclear power plants and decommissioning old ones.

Noda has just replaced Naoto Kan, who stepped down following criticism of the way he handled the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

"Public opinion is generally united in reducing (nuclear plants), instead of increasing them," Noda said.

Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Japan had a target of meeting half of its electricity needs from nuclear power by 2030, up from one third. Only 12 of Japan's 54 commercial power plant reactors are now in operation.

Just before resigning, Kan also advocated a zero-nuclear future for Japan, and passed a feed-in tariff creating incentives for large-scale renewable energy projects. "When I think of safety not being outweighed by risk, the answer is not to rely on nuclear," he said in an interview a week ago.

Renewables, including hydropower, currently supply about 10 percent of Japan's energy mix but this will now rapidly increase.

With the indomitable spirit that allowed the country to rebuild itself after its defeat and the nuclear horror of the Second World War, the country is set to turn its worst crisis since Hiroshima and Nagasaki into an opportunity.

Its new foreign minister Koichiro Gemba, whose own constituency is Fukushima, has announced a national drive for clean energy that will focus not just on satisfying national demand but on exports to help fuel the country's economic recovery.

"We have bullet trains and water. From now on, there will be environmental technology," said Gemba on Monday. He said these would include state-of-the-art solar batteries.

"I'm sure it will be Japan's strong field. We will promote it through economic diplomacy," he said.

It's no immediate consolation for those innocent victims of Fukushima's own Ground Zero, but it should serve as a lesson and inspiration for the rest of the world.

Electricity market reform unlikely to stimulate sufficient investment

The Electricity Market Reform White Paper is scheduled to be published today, the most radical change to the industry since it was privatised 20 years ago, but business is worried that it still won't provide sufficient certainty to permit the required levels of investment.

The paper is designed to shake up the way the supply industry operates and allow the construction of sufficient renewable energy to help the UK generate 15% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, compared with just 3.3% last year. (Only Cyprus and Malta generate a lower proportion of renewable electricity than the UK in Europe.)

The projected £200bn of investment needed by 2020, according to industry regulator Ofgem, is supposed to be sparked off by a guaranteed price for low carbon electricity, including nuclear, which will be passed on to businesses and households through higher bills.

After British Gas' price hikes - gas up 18% and electricity up 16% - announced last Friday, this announcement is particularly sensitive. But such hikes “demonstrate the problems caused for the UK by our over-reliance on energy from overseas", commented Juliet Davenport, CEO of 100% renewable electricity supplier Good Energy.

Almost 60% of the energy we use is imported and the latest rises in wholesale prices are largely due to events overseas out of our control. The proposed market reforms will help to increase energy and price security, and Chris Huhne insists that they will mean a long-term reduction in bills, also because of other Government measures to reduce household energy consumption.

“Once you take the effect on bills you actually find that we're getting overall bill down in the long-run,” he told the BBC, claiming that the UK has "the lowest energy prices in Europe".

Contracts for Difference

Under the white paper's proposals, a new scheme will come in from 2014, replacing and simplifying the current Renewable Obligation Certificate, where generators of renewable power earn tradable certificates which they then sell to utilities.

This system, called Feed-in-Tariffs with Contracts for Difference, will cut support for onshore wind and favour offshore wind and is intended to provide better value for money.

An agency - yet to be decided if it is a new institution, Ofgem or a government department - will pay a top-up premium for green power above the wholesale electricity price, up to an agreed fixed, or "floor," price.

If the wholesale price were to exceed the floor price, the renewable energy supplier would have to pay back the difference to the agency, under long-term contracts designed to promote certainty for investors.

The exact price, plus the amount of low carbon electricity the agency would buy, will be set nearer the time, but may be set by auction for "mature" technologies if there are enough bidders, as with nuclear power.

Business has warned, however, that too much delay on these crucial details could seriously put off vital decisions on investment.

Existing ROC contracts will be protected from the change. Developers will be able to choose between the ROC and the new scheme from 2014-2017.

There will not be an explicit target for utilities on how much of their electricity must be from renewable sources.

HMRC has worked out that electricity bills for an average energy-intensive business are estimated to increase by 2% and 6% in 2013 and 2016 respectively as a result of the carbon price floor, but by the late 2020s bills will be between 2% and 5% lower than would otherwise have been the case.

Reducing the monopoly of the Big Six

The established energy utility companies supply 97% of the energy consumed in households, and part of the purpose of the market reforms is to reduce their stranglehold.

Tim Yeo, Chair of the ECC Committee, has said that "radical reform" of the wholesale energy market is needed to "stop the Big Six from stitching it up".

Last week, Chris Huhne, who told the BBC, “we have to break the dominance of the big six”, met representatives of small energy supply companies who want to become the big companies of tomorrow. They told him that he had to do more to encourage independent energy generators so that smaller suppliers actually have someone to buy energy from.

They asked him to force the large companies to sell a minimum proportion of their electricity on the wholesale market, which would allow independents to undercut their prices.

Good Energy's Juliet Davenport, fresh from being honoured at the 2011 First Women Awards for the Retail and Consumer sector, told Huhne that the Government "has to balance its aim of simplifying energy tariffs with allowing smaller suppliers to innovate".

She also said there must be "complete transparency around the way Big Six generate and sell energy" to "buffer households and businesses from price hikes".

Mike Benson, of Carlton Power, said that allowing small companies to compete is crucial, because the balance sheets of the large utilities "are not strong enough”. “This really is the last chance,” he said. “If the big six are given a soft run this time round, they will lock themselves in for the next 20 years as the only ones able to play in this market.”

In another effort to support community renewable energy schemes, amongst other things, the Treasury had opened a consultation on the provision of finance for them - Tax-advantaged venture capital schemes - which Chris Huhne says will ensure that "enterprise investment schemes and venture capital trusts that invest in Feed-In-Tariff schemes through community-interest companies, co-ops and community benefit societies, will continue to qualify for improved support, as will those generating electricity from micro-hydro schemes".

Support for nuclear

The Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change warned the Government on 16 May that the long term contracts envisaged by the proposed bill at that point will work for supporting nuclear power, but that "different types of contract are needed for renewables and other clean technologies".

The white paper will reveal whether the Government has listened to this advice.

The proposed market reforms could end up giving a £1 billion windfall to nuclear power developers, who are among the Big Six, helping to consolidate their position.

This is why the ECC Committee warned in its report on the proposed bill that the Government "risks distorting its reform of the electricity market merely to save political face over implicit subsidies for nuclear power, through the use of a Carbon Price Floor Support system". It "will increase costs for consumers", they said.

LibDem MPs have also criticised the subsidy and are likely to vote against it.

The ECC Committee's report said the starting point for market reform should be a "clearly defined objective to reduce the carbon intensity of electricity generation in the UK to 50g of CO2 per kilowatt hour (KWh) by 2030".

Demand management

The report also warned that "it is too early for the Government to design a capacity mechanism given the rapid development of smart meters, interconnectors and storage systems that could remove the need for 'peaking plant'".

Reducing peak demand will reduce the amount of overall generation capacity required. Traditionally, energy planning has been done on the basis of meeting peak demand. But the roll-out of smart meters, the Green Deal and other policies will help reduce these peaks.

Greg Barker told Zac Goldsmith in the House last week that "demand reduction is not like alternative forms of energy generation. We are creating a new model, and different types of indices and accounting will be necessary. We will need a robust system of measurement as well as the market mechanism."

Goodbye to coal

Another effect of the market reforms will be to stop British power stations burning coal to generate power within the next three years, which Chris Huhne insists is also vital to bring stability to household bills.

"We've got to move to low carbon sources," Mr Huhne said. "We've got to get off that oil and gas fuel hook."

Carbon emissions from new coal plants will be limited to 450 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilowatt hour of power production, meaning they must have carbon capture and storage equipment installed.