AUGUST 2018

HEAT SHARING
A separate session looked at the potential of heatsharing
co-ops to offer energy alternatives for
villages, housing associations, sheltered housing
developments and similar communities.
Mike Smyth, chair of Energy4All, said “Heat is
about a third of UK emissions and there’s very
little progress in reducing it.”
The UK government wants emissions from the
heating of buildings reduced to zero by 2050, he
added, but “we don’t know how to do it.”
There is government support in place for heat
initiatives in the form of the Renewable Heat
Incentive (RHI), a feed-in tariff for heat, he said,
but other countries are faring rather better. In
Denmark, “64% of households are served by
district heating and the supply is dominated by heat
co-ops ... The co-op movement has driven the
commercial sector out of business.”
Heat co-ops can be powered by biomass
burning. Mr Smyth gave the example of Springbok
Sustainable Wood Heat Co-op, which built a
sustainable woodchip-burning system at a
retirement hamlet in Surrey. This provides reliable
shared heat for the community while saving
between 275 and 300 tonnes of carbon a year.
Another energy source is the ground heat pump.
Jon Hallé, from Share Energy Co-op, said these
use the soil “as a big solar panel” by running
loops under the ground or digging boreholes to
extract stored heat from the sun.
“You might have a loop which is shared by
multiple buildings,” said Mr Hallé. “Getting that
large cost of setting up such a system and to some
degree socialising it is one of those things that
co-ops are good at.”
There are still hurdles to overcome, he added,
with investment returns “not quite there yet” and
legal agreements difficult if the system involved
running equipment through other people’s
land. It is also hard to retrofit the system to
old buildings. And government policy is again a
problem. The RHI scheme only lasts two years,
said Mr Hallé, compared to Denmark where “they
know their horizon is a five-to-ten year one, with
cross-party agreement”.
REGULATION
Patrick Allcorn, head of local energy at the
Department of Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy, warned delegates in the main session
that the sector needed to provide evidence to back
up its demand for state support, for instance by
proving the number of jobs it can create.
They also need to work with local government
to ensure better planning. “Local authorities who
collect waste have a fuel source that they aren’t
optimising,” he said. “They also plan demand but
they do it in isolation from the networks they are
planning for.”
He gave the example of 200,000 new homes
planned in Manchester. “How much have they
consulted Electricity North West about where
that power is coming from? The power is an
afterthought.
“And if we build those houses smart with
efficient local energy, what about houses that
haven’t been retrofitted? A new house on one side
pays £500 a year for energy and across the road a
house that’s 150 years old pays £1,500 for energy.
How acceptable is that as a community?”
He added that the regulator would take a tough
line on energy communities which went off grid.
“It would transfer costs of grid to those least able
to afford it,” he warned. “If that happens you are
dead in the water.”
But he said there were huge possibilities for
the sector, dealing with issues such as loneliness,
by powering transport – and elderly care, by
offering affordable heat so people could stay in
their homes.
“Energy is unlocking a social care problem,”
he said. “It’s an opportunity for local community
energy.” He added: “The UK in the last 10 years
has grown more than any G7 country and has
decarbonised more than any other G7 country.
“This is the biggest economic opportunity
for the country.”
p Mike Smyth from
Energy4All discussed
woodchip-fuelled heat
co-ops. Below: Ground
source heat loops
under installation
AUGUST 2018 | 27