Fuelling the future: what is the role of hydrogen in the low carbon economy? Hydrogen fuel Wednesday, 17 October, 2018.

Policy Exchange 14th Oct 2018 read more »

Scientists have turned coffee waste into electricity for the first time, in research that could help farmers and curb pollution in the developing world. The coffee industry generates a huge amount of liquid waste during the process of turning the raw material of the tree – the coffee cherries – into the 9.5m tons of coffee the world produces each year. Wastewater is generated by farms during the washing of coffee seeds, or beans, and during the water-intensive process of making instant coffee. But now a UK-funded programme, working with Colombian researchers, has proven that it cannot only remove the contaminants from the water but make electricity in the process. A tea m led by the University of Surrey developed a fuel cell that uses microbes instead of chemicals like a fuel cell in a hydrogen car, which eat the waste matter and generate a small amount of energy. Dr Claudio Avignone Rossa, a systems microbiologist at the university, said: “You’re not going to light up London with these things, but you’re going to put a light where there was none. “The farmer will be getting a little bit of energy coming from the waste they are throwing away. So the environment will be cleaner. The finances of the farm will be improved.”

Guardian 14th Oct 2018 read more »

New analysis from Aurora Energy Research predicts around 13GW of flexible and distributed generation assets set to be deployed through to 2030. The fledgling market for batteries and other forms of flexible power generation is set for rapid expansion over the coming decade, according to a new analysis from Aurora Energy Research.

Business Green 12th Oct 2018 read more »

More than £6bn will need to be invested in the UK’s energy storage market by 2030 if the nation is to decarbonise at the rate necessary to meet legally-binding carbon targets. That is a key conclusion of new research from energy market analyst Aurora Energy Research, which found that 13GW of additional storage and flexible generation assets is needed by 2030 to balance the grid as more renewable projects come online. Specifically, Aurora predicts that the National Grid’s balancing and storage market will double in size to reach around £2bn by 2030. Commenting on the publication of Aurora’s research, renewables firm Anesco’s executive chairman Steve Shine said: “There has been a visible shift in the way [storage] technologies are being regarded and what may once have been seen as a high-risk investment, is now considered a strategic long-term investment, that has benefits across many levels.” By 2030, investment in renewable energy across Europe is set to grow as EU Member States aim for green electricity to account for 27% of the bloc’s energy mix. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has predicted that renewable energy sources will account for around three-quarters of the expected $10trn global investment into power generating technologies between now and 2040. However, experts have consistently warned that the intermittency of wind and solar energy will create wildly varying outputs from renewable energy generation in the UK by 2040, hence the need for energy storage solutions.

Edie 12th Oct 2018 read more »

The EU is planning to allow state aid for electric battery research and will offer billions of euros of co-funding to companies willing to build giant battery factories. Brussels is concerned that the EU auto industry, which employs 13m people, could be left behind in the race to build mass market electric vehicles because of their reliance on batteries from Asia. Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi said at the Paris Motor Show that the industry “cannot continue to prosper” unless it builds its own capacity. “We know very clearly that the future is electric and we simply have to catch up with this (battery) technology,” said Maros Sefcovic, energy vice-president at the European Commission. “You cannot develop new models or high-quality cars if you do not master the skills, the innovation, and research link with batteries.” Roughly 80 per cent of the world’s existing and planned battery production capacity is in Asia, according to Bloomberg data. China alone has 69 per cent, with the US at 15 per cent and the EU at under 4 per cent.

FT 15th Oct 2018 read more »

REMOTE communities across Scotland are sharing a multi-million-pound cash bonanza generated by the wind and rain that batters them. Over the past decade, nearly £50 million has been paid to communities from the proceeds of wind farms that have been built nearby. The money has been spent on a diverse range of schemes, from the renovation of village halls and bowling clubs, to taking school pupils on day trips, providing musical tuition and giving everyone in the community new Christmas lights. In other cases, canny investors who have pumped savings into buying shares in community energy schemes are reaping up to eight per cent return on their investment – far more than they might hope for in any high street savings account. Such is the clamour to invest in renewable schemes, the latest share offer that calls for community investors to purchase the first of £1.89m worth of shares in six hydroelectric projects across the Highlands raised one-third of the money required within days. Indeed, demand for a share of the windfall means the offer is likely to be over-subscribed. But the real money-spinners are the lucrative community agreements made in the early stages of wind-farm planning, which has led to millions being distributed for the good of the surrounding area.

Herald 14th Oct 2018 read more »

The East Anglia ONE wind farm off the coast of Lowestoft is beginning to take shape. Business writer Bethany Whymark and visual specialist Antony Kelly went out to sea to see the progress.

Eastern Daily Press 14th Oct 2018 read more »

In this STA Blog, Richard Hall of Energy Transitions details a number of challenges for the UK’s clean heat sector and outlines some exciting EU funding opportunities available. The provision of affordable, decarbonised heat is a major global challenge; one for which current and future renewable energy technologies have a great deal of potential to fulfil. Yet the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global renewable heat consumption in 2017 amounted to 472Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent). This represents just 9% (approximately) of the total global heat demand. Within the UK, heat is largely generated through the burning of natural gas and a recent report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) highlighted the “formidable challenge” of replacing the UK’s natural gas grid with renewable energy. Over the winter of 2017/18, the peak daily demand for natural gas was 3.6 times higher than that for electricity. In addition, the 3-hour difference in demand for natural gas was 116 GW, compared with only 11 GW for electricity; highlighting the variability in gas demand across the day. In the past, active solar heating has been dominated by residential solar thermal water heating systems, used for domestic hot water production. The largest deployment of these has been in the form of the thermosyphon systems installed in China (Solar Heat Worldwide, 2018). But with urbanisation, digitalisation and the rapidly lowering cost of renewable electricity generation technologies, the solar heat industry is changing rapidly. Two notable trends are in the increase in the use of Solar District Heating and Digital Heat.

STA 12th Oct 2018 read more »

SunGift Energy has installed a 140.5kW solar rooftop array on behalf of the University of Exeter, a project completed without the need for subsidy. The array comprises more than 500 panels and covers 800 square metres of the university’s sports hall roof. It’s expected to generate just shy of 125,000kWh of power each year, all of which will be used on-site. Speaking to Solar Power Portal, SunGift’s Gareth Walton explained that the campus is served by a single MPAN. This means that only a single PV installation can claim the feed-in tariff, with one such system having already been installed. The main driver for this second, follow-up installation, Walton added, had been that PV prices had dropped to such an extent that the system made sense economically without subsidy support.

Solar Power Portal 11th Oct 2018 read more »

Lord Deben, the Chairman of the influential Committee on Climate Change, has been found guilty by the BBC Executive Complaints Unit of misleading listeners of the Today Programme. The former Environment Secretary claimed that the government were preventing communities that want to build onshore wind farms from doing so: “What on earth is the government doing, saying that even where a community wants to have an onshore wind farm, it can’t have it. This is sheer dogma.” But the BBC Executive Complaints Unit found that the opposite is true: the Government has in fact devolved the decision to approve onshore wind turbines to local councils. The BBC acknowledged that “Lord Deben was presented as someone with a significant degree of expertise and knowledge in this area” and accepted that “he should have been challenged on this point to ensure listeners were not left with a materially misleading impression.”

Guido Fawkes 12th Oct 2018 read more »

Centrica has completed the deployment of almost 100MW of energy storage capacity across two projects in the UK that are able to respond to peaks in demand within two minutes. The 49MW projects are in Brigg in North East Lincolnshire and Peterborough on land adjacent to Centrica’s existing gas-fired power plants. The plants are comprised of five 9.8MW ‘engines’ each supplied by Wärtsilä, which also delivered EPC services for both sites, and are expected to typically run for a few hours a day. Mark Futyan, distributed power systems director at Centrica Business Solutions, said: “We’re seeing increasing demand for flexible power so this is an important demonstration of how we can help our customers to navigate the new energy landscape and deliver a variety of end-to-end solutions including onsite generation, demand side response and energy storage.” The power plants form part of a £180m investment by Centrica into a series of flexible generation and storage facilities announced in December 2016. This follows the company’s exit from traditional generation in favour of flexibility.

Solar Power Portal 12th Oct 2018 read more »

Fair Isle, the remote island half way between Orkney and Shetland, is famed for its knitwear, migratory birds and, of course, its place in the shipping forecast. Now, for the first time in its history, Britain’s most remote community will also have a reliable electricity supply 24 hours a day. The island, which is three miles long and one and a half miles wide, has a population of just 55. Since the 1980s, power has come from a combination of wind turbines and a diesel generator, with no way of storing electricity. And until now when there was no wind it was lights out between 11.30pm and 7.30am. But now the island, which is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, has a £3.5m renewable energy scheme made up of three turbines, along with solar panels and batteries that can store enough for about a day’s supply. The ribbon on the new scheme will be cut by local schoolchildren because Scottish government minister Paul Wheelhouse could not make it because of the weather.

BBC 12th Oct 2018 read more »