Innovation for Energy Efficiency

Proceedings of the European Conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 15–17 September 1987

D A Reay, A Wright

• Publisher: Pergamon
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780080347981
• eBook ISBN:
  9781483146973
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Real Estate
• Index: Business

Innovation for Energy Efficiency presents the proceedings of the conference and associated exhibit of the same name, which are organized within the framework of European Conferences on Technology and Innovation, aimed at encouraging innovation and approaches to energy efficiency. The book is composed of different studies that are presented in this symposium. These studies address different topics about energy, such as the role of the plant manufacturer in the energy market; energy planning; and barriers and opportunities to energy efficiency and conservation. Other topics addressed include policies on energy and the need for them to be updated and the application of these techniques in various areas, such as clothing and housing. The text is recommended for those who work at energy industries; those who are studying ways to improve energy efficiency; and those who work at government agencies in charge with the regulation and improvement of energy use and its related resources.

SESSION PAPERS

Local Energy Planning in the UK: Past Experience and New Initiatives

A. Atkinson

ABSTRACT

Energy problems crowd into the headlines at ever more frequent intervals. Major studies in North America and continental Europe have pointed to energy efficiency programmes administered at the local level as providing a substantial part of the solution. However, local energy initiatives remain weak in the UK. This paper analyses the structure of Britain’s energy economy and the strategy which has been pursued by the country’s highly centralised energy institutions. It continues by taking a look at the interest that has been increasing at the local level to implement effective energy efficiency measures, including the development of municipal heat distribution systems (district heating - DH) that could make use of waste heat from electricity generation (combined heat and power - CHP) and other sources, to reduce local heating costs and the national energy bill. It goes on to note how so far central agencies have done little to bring about effective action and appear, rather, to have had a discouraging effect on these developments. The longer term answer is seen as involving substantial decentralisation of power in the energy field through institutional changes.

KEYWORDS

Local energy planning

energy economy

energy institutions

energy efficiency

combined heat and power (CHP)

decentralisation

INTRODUCTION

Recently energy issues have come with increasing frequency to occupy the top of the political agenda. One problem after another has claimed major media attention, sometimes over extended periods. Items include:

Determination of the Government to restructure the coal industry precipitated the bitter miner’s strike of 1984–1985, which was informed by a determination to defend jobs and communities from imminent destruction; since the collapse of the strike there have been more than 50,000 redundencies in the industry.

A spell of cold weather in early 1986 revealed how badly heated many people in Britain are in winter and how many old people are at risk of dying of hypothermia; the situation was repeated in early 1987; the solution of the moment was to provide warm blankets and ‘cold weather supplements’ and there was little or no discussion of more permanent solutions.

The disaster at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union in April 1986 demonstrated the environmental hazards of nuclear power; whilst this shifted public opinion and opposition political parties further towards an antipathy for the technology, neither the electricity supply industry nor the Government were prepared to admit that there might be better economic and technical solutions to our need for electricity supply.

In early 1986 the international crude oil price collapsed; this was the latest in a series of wild fluctuations in oil prices since 1973, leaving many in authority confused and fatalistic concerning the possibility to make rational calculations about the most economic investment for the satisfaction of future energy needs; meanwhile the depletion of North Sea oil and gas resources in the coming years represents a general threat to the economic wellbeing of the country.

In general there has been a tendency to see all these as predominantly technological or financial problems, in some cases exacerbated by ‘political motivation’. More considered judgement has, however, focussed upon existing institutional structures as being in part responsible for generating the problems, and then being badly adapted to heading off expected future problems. Major studies by the United States National Research Council (Stern and Aronson, 1984) and the International Institute for Environment and Society, funded by a number of national and international agencies (Joerges and Olsen, 1983), have concluded that local institutions and community organisation - involving a process of ‘remunicipalisation’ (Hennicke, 1985) - will have to play a major role in the future energy economy if these problems are to be successfully combatted. In many industrialised countries local utilities, often simply local authority departments, have continued to play a significant role in the national energy economy and are now being provided with additional resources and responsibilities. In the United States and Scandinavian countries local energy planning is now a statutory duty; in West Germany and France alternative possibilities for co-ordinated local activity in the energy field are obtaining substantial backing from central governments. The European Commission (ECC, 1982) is also committed to ‘far greater decentralisation of decision-making’ in the energy field.

The UK, on the other hand, with its extremely centralised energy institutions, has been relatively untouched by these developments. Virtually no official or academic recognition has been given to the possibility that local institutions might play anything but a marginal role in the national energy economy. This does not, however, mean that no local initiatives have been forthcoming, or that initiatives in process of formation now might not at some future stage provide the basis for more substantial initiatives in the medium-term future. This paper therefore looks first at Britain’s energy economy and institutions and then reviews the local energy initiatives which have appeared in the UK in recent years, and assesses the prospects and possibilities for their future development together with the problems which they confront.

THE UK ENERGY ECONOMY

In order to make sense out of the variety of local energy initiatives in the UK it is necessary to obtain an overview of the energy economy and institutions which they seek to influence and change. This section thus provides a sketch of salient dimensions of the UK energy economy first in technical terms and then in terms of institutional and social questions.

The Uses of Energy

In the first instance, the concept of the energy economy is seen as involving the question of the supply of fuels according to need. In detail, fuel supply goes through various stages, the main ones being: extraction as primary fuel, conversion and transmission, and end use. ‘Conversion’ includes oil refining, electricity generation, coke and town gas production. In the UK this currently involves the loss of about 30% of primary energy, mainly in the form of power station waste heat. There is further wastage by consumers after purchase, and whereas there are no statistics on this in the UK, in West Germany this amounts to over 50% of end use energy and in the UK the situation is likely to be similar. So useful consumption amounts to about 30% of primary fuel. Technically there are quite straightforward ways of improving substantially on this figure and generally reducing energy demand. It is in this area of ‘demand management’ that the major potential role for local energy initiatives is seen.

The mix of primary fuels supplied through the UK energy economy has changed relatively swiftly in recent years. Over the two decades following the Second World War, UK energy use increased on average by about 2% per year. Since the 1973 ‘energy crisis’, use has fluctuated around an average of 330 million tons of coal equivalent (mtce) per year. Until the 1950s, coal predominated as the primary fuel, being steadily replaced across the 1960s by oil, This, too, gave way as use of natural gas made rapid inroads in heating markets after 1967. Currently coal and oil take about a third each of the primary energy market, the former predominantly for generating e...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Other Pergamon Titles of Interest
• Copyright
• Innovation for Energy Efficiency
• The Organising Committee
• KEYNOTE ADDRESS
• SESSION PAPERS
• ADDENDUM
• Author Index
• Subject Index