Connecting the Future - Greenpeace UK

Connecting the future: the UK’s renewable energy strategy
Broader system issues
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This section set out some of the broader system issues which have to be
addressed if there is to be a shift to significantly lower-carbon energy systems.
The implementation of new technologies is problematic because existing,
conventional technologies are locked in by a variety of economic and social
factors. These effectively exclude other technologies which do not conform to
the characteristics of the conventional technologies.
Traditionally, the electricity and heat sectors have been treated in policy and
regulatory terms as entirely separate areas, with measures directed at encouraging
technologies in one particular area. The RO (see section 4.1.1) is a good example
of this sort of policy design, despite the fact that some renewables technologies,
notably biomass, can offer heat services as well as electricity. Moreover, because
the RO was designed to promote relatively large-scale renewable output,
microgeneration technologies were effectively excluded from the scheme at the
outset. Although this situation has subsequently been adjusted, it remains complex
and difficult for householders to access ROCs under the RO). Heat providing
renewables technologies – ground source heat pumps, solar thermal arrays – are
excluded altogether, and do not have an equivalent mechanism to support their
output. While this is perhaps understandable in that the RO was designed to
promote renewable electricity supplies, nevertheless a more effective approach to
improved efficiency and the longer-term shift to low-carbon energy systems could
be provided by an integrated renewables support mechanism designed to maximise
all the environmental benefits that renewables can offer, whether in electricity
generation or in other energy systems.
The increasing integration of energy systems will also require consideration of
the environmental benefits that can potentially be offered by advanced fossil
fuel technologies – in particular, the efficient use of fossil fuels in CHP plants,
which produce lower CO2 emissions per unit of usable energy provided than
plants producing only heat or electricity, and (in the case of smaller-scale local
plants) offer improved efficiency in transporting electricity from the point of
production to the point of use as a result of lower transmission and distribution
losses.
The need is therefore for a more integrated, holistic policy approach to
minimising carbon emissions from the UK’s energy systems, which would
involve explicitly considering and rewarding all technologies that can offer a
reduction in emissions. This approach would set the UK more decisively on a
path to achieving lower-carbon energy systems.
Dealing separately with the various obstacles to the increased take up of
renewables, and other low-carbon technologies, is to an extent artificial, in that
such obstacles tend to be interrelated. For example, infrastructure problems
can be connected to market conditions, planning issues, financial norms and so
on. In other words, their extent and impact are to a degree influenced by other
system components. With that proviso in mind, however, a review of some of
the key regulatory and system obstacles to a low-carbon energy future in the
UK follows.