Nottingham City Council has met its climate change targets four years ahead of schedule following a number of energy saving initiatives and significant investments in renewables across the city. According to recent government statistics, the city has achieved a 33% reduction in carbon emissions since 2005, beating a 26% target set by the local authority for 2020. The local authority says this makes it the best performing of the core cities outside of London, as it now produces three tonnes less of CO2 per year when compared to 2005. Solar has formed a large proportion of the initiatives taken across the city, including the completion of the UK’s largest solar carport in August 2015, and the installation of solar panels on over 4,000 council house roof tops. “We think we’ve got the highest proportion of solar panels per household in the country so that’s clearly making a difference and it’s taking people out of fuel poverty,” Clark added.
Solar Portal 9th Aug 2016 read more »
The power revolution could soon be moving from dream to reality. Small-scale projects such as those in Newham, Brixton and Islington give a glimpse of Britain’s energy future. For the past century there has been one dominant energy model, the centralised production and distribution of fossil fuel-based power through the grid. Then in the Sixties we had the dream of abundant nuclear power, centrally delivered and “too cheap to meter”. That dream of energy abundance may look far off but how does local distributed energy stack up as an option? Can it provide the scale to form a credible part of an energy strategy? Here are three emerging reasons why it looks, against the odds, like it could move from niche to mainstream. On the technological side, without a high-octane regulatory support package, decentralised energy is already happening. Not with big budgets, necessarily, not with mega-glamour, but with a series of small-scale projects tailored to what’s there. In Newham, for example, the Combined Heat and intelligent Power plant (CHiP) aims to harness the energy from “fatbergs”, the bus-size balls of grease which cost Thames Water an estimated £1 million a month to remove, using teams of trained “flushers” decked out with protective white suits and shovels who descend into London’s Victorian sewer system to hack up the fat. CHiP plans to use the fat instead to power 40,000 homes.
Evening Standard 10th Aug 2016 read more »