Now offering £7,500 to homes that strip out old gas-fired heating, the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme has appeared to under-perform in the two years since it opened to voucher applications.  Funding of £450 million for the BUS is approved by D-ESNZ until next year.

But figures released today by the ministry show a 93% near-doubling year on year last month of applications for the scheme.

By the end of April, a total of 40,259 applications for BUS re-imbursement had reached the ministry during the two years of the scheme. All but 4% were for air-sourced heat pumps.

Raising the BUS grant in October by half to £7,500 seems to have sped up allocations.  Applications for cash to redeem vouchers underpinning installations rose last month by 57%, compared with April 2023.  Vouchers issued towards costs rose too over the same period, up 69% to just under 1,800 last month.

All told, just over 25,000 home boilers have been replaced under the BUS, today’s figures show. That appears still to lag ministers’ expectations. When announced in 2021, the BUS set a target of 600,000 replacements by 2028.

Average costs in the market of a system redeemed during the BUS’s two years has been £13,150 for an airsource pump and £25,00 for a ground source pump, the figures show.  Both values include the grant value.

Data released by Ofgem also shows that there have been more than 40,000 applications in total, with the scheme having paid out over 25,000 grants, with more than £148 million issued.

Rural homes account for 57% of all pump installations paid for under the BUS. 54% were on the gas grid.

From Swedish pump manufacturer & installer Aira, UK chief executive Daniel Särefjord acknowledged how the government’s raising the BUS grant to £7,500 had put wheels under the market.

“This helping hand has raised awareness of the benefits of innovative heat pumps”, said Särefjord, “such as lower heating costs, greater energy security for the UK and a 75% reduction in heating-related carbon emissions and air pollution in comparison to a domestic gas or oil boiler.

“After the election”, the Aira boss continued, “I hope the new government will work closely with the British heat pump sector to meet our climate commitments, decarbonise homes and secure a fair deal for UK residents.

“In the next parliament, our much-needed energy transition will depend on MPs scrapping planning policy red tape, rebalancing the taxes and levies on electricity and gas, as well as continuing and progressing the nation’s subsidy offering.”

Ministers point to pricing moves from some energy retailers to make heat pumps more attractive still.  Octopus Energy and British Gas both offers complete heat pump installations from £500.

Some offer tariffs designed specifically to work with heat pumps. Octopus’s Cozy electricity tariff can save heat pump users an estimated £96 compared with a standard flexible tariff.  Ovo’s Heat Pump Plus tariff allows customers access to run a pump on a specialist tariff fixed at 15p/kWh.

“These latest numbers show that for more and more families, the switch to a heat pump is starting to make financial sense”, said energy secretary Claire Coutinho.

“Our plan is to give families a helping hand, rather than forcing them to make expensive changes before they are ready”.

The post BUS applications double, spurring home heat pump installs appeared first on theenergyst.com.

The only significant new step announced by the energy security secretary today, according to the lobbyists, concerns perceptions of accuracy in ranking the soil quality on agricultural land housing new racks of panels.

The government intends to strengthen such perceptions by means of more independent certification in land assessments sent by developers to planning authorities.  This measure is intended to help avoid disputes over which areas are subject to planning guidelines on higher quality agricultural land.

“Both Coutinho and the Prime Minister’s broader comments on food security appear to be directed at a small minority of anti-solar Conservative backbenchers, rather than decision-makers in local councils”, said Solar Energy UK in a statement released this afternoon.

“Solar farms take up a tiny fraction of the country. That will still be the case in 2035 when the government expects us to have four times current solar generation capacity”, said the industry body, citing the government’s April 2022 Energy Security Strategy, and a Carbon Brief evaluation later that year on solar farms’ impact on UK farmland.

“Solar farms are no threat to food security; they never have been and never will be. In fact, it’s the opposite,” said Solar Energy UK’s ‘roi soleil’, chief executive Chris Hewett.

“According to Defra, the main threat to food security is climate change, which is what solar farms are there to fight.”

“Without solar farms, hundreds of traditional farming businesses would have gone to the wall, unable to produce food without the security of a reliable income,” Hewett added.

Yesterday the government published the first release of Britain’s new official Food Security Index. The cost of energy to food producers was among key factors it identifies.

By the government’s own figures, the lobbyists claim, solar farms are the cheapest source of electricity, adding to their contribution to food security, to decarbonisation and thus to Britain’s broader national interests.

Advocates for solar farms say it is common for agriculture to continue in fields once panels are hooked up, typically through sheep grazing. Racks erected a metre and more above the soil also offer benefits to nature, such as providing shelter for wildlife and native flora, thus restoring natural habitats among intensively farmed ‘green deserts’.

Solar farms are demonstrably liked by their human neighbours, as consistently evidenced in Whitehall’s own surveys. Independent research in November by analysis firm Climate Barometer found that MPs & casual readers of newspapers vastly overestimate public opposition to farms’ introduction.

“The solar industry will continue to follow established principles”, the lobbyists’ statement went on. “(The industry) looks forward to the publication of the government-industry Solar Roadmap, which will light the way towards adding more than 50GW of solar capacity over the next decade”. The master plan is expected in coming weeks.

The post Solar farms ‘no threat to food security’, PV industry tells Coutinho appeared first on theenergyst.com.

The move calls into question the Sunak administration’s declared commitment to purge carbon dioxide from Britain’s electricity by 2035, against Labour’s goal of 2030.

At least one green supplier, as well as environmental campaigners, have been dismayed by Conservative pre-briefings of Coutinho’s announcement today.

But her intention comes with Rishi Sunak’s personal backing.  In a statement made in advance of his appointee’s address, the premier declared: “Britain needs to reach our 2035 goals in a sustainable way that doesn’t leave people without energy on a cloudy, windless day.

“I will not gamble with our energy security. I will make the tough decisions so we can always power Britain from Britain”.

In her Chatham House speech, Coutinho was expected to say direct replacements will be needed for as many as four gas-powered generators, covering for intermittent renewables, which are as yet inadequately supported by battery storage.

At the same time, D-ESNZ’s secretary signalled that imminent market reforms must enact locational pricing of power, in a move colleagues claim will itself incentivise more clean generation.

Secretary Coutinho today launched the second phase of public consultation over REMA, the government’s Review of Energy Market Arrangements.  The reforms are billed as the most radical overhaul ever of Britain’s electricity trading and delivery.

Locational or ‘zonal’ pricing will be their centrepiece.  Supporters claim the measure can avoid costly network upgrades and pylon re-fits, potentially spurring investment in localised green supply, particularly in areas of unfulfilled need such as the South-East. Sharper customer sensitivity to regional or faster changing prices will result too, say advocates.

Ever since power became a tradable asset, Britain’s system of marginal or ‘spot’ national pricing has dictated that the most expensive new unit of electricity available at any given time sets prices to meet increased demand, no matter where it arises.

Gas plants’ unmatched speed of response for big volumes drives market-makers to choose the fuel as the default solution.  Gas is preferred too, due to the UK’s scarcity of battery-stored power at scale, yielding cleaner but intermittent wind and solar.

Locational costing could, the ministry calculates, cut up to £45 off typical annual bills per household.  But even with REMA, new gas plants will be needed to cushion its introduction, officials believe, as Britain’s nascent electricity storage sector grows to meet demand. Coutinho claims new gas plants would be ‘NetZero ready’, but her statement today confirms they will be unabated.

Last year, gas turbines generated 32% of the UK’s electricity, ahead of 29% from wind. Nuclear met 14%. Prices for long-term supply stand at record levels. Last month, deals to supply power in 2027-28 closed at an unprecedented £65 per MWh.

“Without gas backing up renewables, we face the genuine prospect of blackouts,” Coutinho said this morning. “Other countries in recent years have been so threatened by supply constraints that they have been forced back to coal”.

“If we cannot retain control of energy prices, if we cannot protect families and businesses from the threat of future shocks, then we are not really secure. So, we must be hard-headed about the future of our energy system”.

Nigel Pocklington, CEO of green supplier Good Energy, was scathing about Coutinho’s favouring of unabated new gas.

“In scaremongering about ‘blackouts’ from renewables, the energy security secretary appears to be getting her energy policy advice from conspiratorial blog posts published circa 2010,” the Good Energy boss stated.

“It makes no sense to be promising new gas generation when we are still recovering from the shock of the UK’s unique exposure to global gas prices. Let alone when the UK’s cheapest source of power, onshore wind, is effectually blocked.

“Her announcements on locational pricing have the potential to help make our energy system more fit for a lower carbon future”, Pocklington conceded.

“This is the real energy security measure announced today — more local, home grown clean renewable power brings down bills, carbon and our reliance on volatile gas markets.”

From the Association of Decentralised Energy, policy head Sarah Honan backed REMA as a means to create a more flexible and transparent electricity market, powered more by renewables.

She said: “If we don’t place the demand-side at the heart of electricity market reform, we will need to build four new gas plants by 2030.

“The UK has one of the strongest offshore wind markets in the world. And yet, during the energy crisis, we were also one of the countries most exposed to high gas prices, leading to record levels of fuel poverty and debt in the energy system.

“Transforming our energy markets is not a story of balancing the books between fossil fuels, renewables and wires to transport it all. It is a story of how UK homes and businesses are empowered to participate in these markets on equal terms, with equal rewards”, said the ADE official.

“Rather than continuing to focus on a handful of generation assets dotted around the country, we must turn our gaze to the millions of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and industrial processes that can balance the books, if only the markets allowed them to.”

Greg Jackson, founder of market-disrupting green generator Octopus agreed. “Our ridiculously distorted energy market forces us to send electricity to France when we need it most and pay a premium to buy it back from Norway, all while paying Scottish wind farms to switch off.

“With locational pricing, customers will save hundreds of pounds a year on bills and parts of the UK will see the lowest electricity prices in Europe, attracting new industry and reducing the need for new pylons”, the Octopus boss went on.

“It’s right that the government is progressing zonal pricing and the energy sector must now work together to get this up and running swiftly so we can attract new industries – from data centres to manufacturing – and customers can benefit from cheaper electricity fast.”

For solar developers, lobby group SolarEnergyUK said it remained sceptical.

“Zonal pricing would introduce additional uncertainty into the market, raising the cost of capital for renewable energy at a time when we need to deploy around 10 gigawatts of renewable capacity each year until 2035, and deliver a lowest cost clean energy system for billpayers”, said the trade body.

From heat pump installer Heatio, currently aiding E.on customers, CEO Simon Roberts was critical.

“Further investment in, and a reliance on fossil fuels contradicts the government’s commitment to Net Zero”, Roberts commented. More concerningly, it highlights its belief that this will deliver greater energy security.

“We have seen in recent times the impact of failed government policies to decarbonise industrial and residential buildings, which has led to the energy crisis we face today.

“We should be focusing investment on energy security and renewable generation here in the UK, not becoming more reliant on foreign gas”, the Heatio boss added.

“This announcement only highlights the lack of strategy and investment in clean energy generation, storage and a UK smart grid, which would enable the flexibility we need in both supply and demand to serve UK energy customers”.

The House of Lords’ science committee is expected tomorrow to criticize the government’s delays in sending clear signals to companies eager to invest in utility-scale electricity storage, including as back-up beyond two hours.

Today, its chair Baroness Brown of Cambridge was dismissive of Coutinho’s & Sunak’s intentions.

“it is disappointing that the government seems focused on fossil fuels as a stop gap and not long duration energy storage as a secure solution”, the peer commented.

“A strategic reserve of hydrogen as a means of low-carbon long-duration energy storage would insulate the UK against dependence on volatile gas prices whilst allowing it to continue decarbonising the electricity system.

“We should be building this now rather than designing in delay by expecting the market to deliver fossil-fuelled plants that hardly be used and will rapidly become stranded assets.”

The post Coutinho: New unabated gas ‘needed beyond 2030’; REMA needs local pricing appeared first on theenergyst.com.

In a policy programme dubbed CCUS Vision, energy secretary Claire Coutinho wants increasing numbers of storage providers to compete in the embryonic technology, as they offer capacity and deals to industrial producers of CO2.

Launched today, the package of policies is part of emerging promotion of CO2 storage, backed over coming decades with £20 billion of public money.

Coutinho believes CCUS Vision can add £5 billion to the economy by mid-century. Her goal is a fully competitive storage market by 2035, featuring tradable CO2 products with sophisticated features.

In this decade alone, D-ESNZ believes CCUS will create 5,000 jobs in handling and trading the pollutant-cum-feedstock, at the same time cutting storage costs to market participants.

International storage trades are also sought, as ministers seek to make Britain a global hub for CO2 transactions, mimicking its established role as a global financial centre.  Early exposure for UK firms in storage trading can, or so ministers believe, give them a first-mover advantage in pricing and settling global deals.

Besides geology and decades of relevant skills acquired in maritime engineering, Britain’s CCUS advantages include, say ministers, a wealth of exhausted gas field such as the re-purposed Rough storage facility under the North Sea, pictured. Our island status offers safe capacity for planet-warming CO2, currently estimated by officials at up to 78 billion tonnes.

The CCUS Vision raft of policies is the government’s latest step in delivering its ambitions in carbon storage.   As part of that overall £20 billion investment, Whitehall has a goal of up to 30 million tonnes of CO2 sequestered every year by 2030.

Details of the CCUS Vision include:

• Moving to a competitive allocation process for CCUS projects after 2026, speeding up the sector’s growth
• Easing market access after 2024 of CO2 projects free of pipelines, using other forms of transport such as ship, road and rail
• Establishing a working group led by industry to identify and adopt solutions to reduce the cost of capturing CO2

Four regional carbon capture clusters are earmarked by ministers to revive Britain’s coastal industrial areas; HyNet in North West England, East Coast Cluster in Teesside and the Humber, Acorn in Scotland and Viking in the Humber.

“Thanks to the UK’s geology, skills and infrastructure, we are in a unique position to lead the way on carbon capture technologies“, energy secretary Coutinho said.

“That is why we’re making one of the biggest funding commitments in Europe on carbon capture that will cut emissions from our atmosphere, while unlocking investment, creating tens of thousands of jobs and growing the UK economy.”

From the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, CEO Ruth Herbert responded warmly.  “We welcome the CCUS Vision published today, setting out a long-term strategy for the UK’s CCUS industry to be able to store over 50Mt a year by 2035 to support the decarbonisation of domestic industries and take advantage of export opportunities.

“It is great to see CO2 transport by ship, road and rail will be enabled from 2025 onwards, which will also support longer-term cross-border CO2 transport solutions.”

More details here.

The post Vision thing: Government launches aspirations for competitive CCUS appeared first on theenergyst.com.

In helping homes replace gas heating with electric devices, the government says boosting the BUS grant to £7,500 over the summer has led to a 57% rise in BUS applications. Today’s moves are intended to accelerate that drive still further.

From green devices standards body the MCS Foundation, the response was positive. Campaigns manager Dr Richard Hauxwell-Baldwin said; “This additional funding is hugely welcome, and follows our campaign to get more government support for the energy transition.

“Heat pumps are the only viable option for decarbonising home heating at scale“, the MCS spokesman asserted. “£1.5bn more announced today will fund an additional 200,000 heat pump installations over four years”.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt claimed in last month’s Autumn Statement that Conservatives are supporting Britain’s worst insulated homes with support measures totalling £ 6 billion.

Around 200,000 poorer households will benefit most, D-ESNZ claimed today, among a wider one million homes set to share the ministry’s claimed total investment.

Besides £1.5 billion more for boiler scrappage, the ministry’s breakdown includes the following sums for helping homes and businesses:

• £1.25 billion more for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, supporting retrofitted insulation in 140,000 social homes
• granting £500 million to a new local authority retrofit scheme, allocated to support up to 60,000 low-income and cold homes, including those off the gas grid,
• £485 million added to the Green Heat Network Fund, allocated to help 60,000 homes and buildings tap into affordable, low carbon heating through new heat networks
• allocating £45 million to the Heat Network Efficiency Scheme, upping the performance of around 100 existing heat networks
• £225 million more for the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund
• Launching in 2025 a new £400 million energy efficiency grant targetting better insulation

Hunt commented today: “Investing in energy efficiency combined with energy security is the only way to stop ourselves being at the mercy of international gas prices, one of the main drivers of inflation”.

Energy secretary Claire Coutinho echoed the Chancellor.  “Cutting energy bills is my top priority. Today’s funding will help those who are most in need and keep around a million more families warm during winter.

“Everyone deserves to live in a warm, energy efficient home. We have already made excellent progress with nearly 50% of properties in England now having an Energy Performance Certificate of C – up from just 14% in 2010.

“This funding will help us go even further and improve 200,000 cold, low income and social homes”.

Mark Sommerfeld, the REA’s Deputy Director of policy welcomed more BUS funding.

“Since the grant level was raised this year, as called for by the REA, it is positive that the scheme has become a more attractive offer that actively enables households to invest in heat pumps, helping to decarbonise their properties. This will drive up deployment rates, which remain well behind what is needed to keep the UK aligned to heat decarbonisation targets.

The post Government finds £1.5 billion more for heat pumps, breaks down £6 billion of efficiency spending appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Scores of thousands of new homes and premises divided between London, Lancaster, Watford and Suffolk will benefit from the £65 million trial, warmed with streamed pixels and wonga from Whitehall’s Green Heat Network fund.

In a UK first, waste heat from the server barns close to new construction sites will be being recycled as a source of both low carbon comfort for homes and factories, as well as of thousands of new high-tech jobs.

Heat in buildings is estimated to account for 30% of all UK emissions. So the transition to networks pumped with second-life heat is a major plank in the nation’s drive towards Net Zero.

In north west London, the Old Oak & Park Royal Development Corporation straddles premises in the boroughs of Brent, Ealing, and Hammersmith & Fulham. The Corporation’s upgraded heat network, backed by £36 million of government cash, will connect 10,000 new homes and 250,000 square metres of commercial space to waste heat from rack-heavy computer ‘barns’.

OPDC chief executive David Lunts enthused: “Recycling the huge amounts of wasted heat from this locality’s data centres into heat and energy for local residents, a major hospital and other users is an exciting and innovative example of OPDC’s support for the mayor’s net zero ambitions”.

Lancaster University will fully decarbonise its campus, courtesy of £21 million given in support of a new low-carbon heat network.  Lagged pipes both over- & underground will warm its 15,000 students with heat from a large electric pump, powered by a new solar PV farm and an existing wind turbine.

Today’s round of funding comes on top of £122 million already awarded to support eleven new heat networks across the country, under the government’s Green Heat Network Fund.

Energy secretary Claire Coutinho said: “Innovative projects, like these announced today, are another example of why the UK is a world leader in cutting carbon emissions.

“We are investing in the technologies of the future so that families across the country will now be able to warm their homes with low-carbon, recycled heat, while creating thousands of new skilled jobs.”

Brent will benefit further, receive £5.2 million for a district network in south Kilburn. 2,900 customers on 34 sites will receive heat generated by air source heat pumps via a 2.79km pipe network. Gas boilers will linger as back-up.

In Suffolk, a new housing estate at Chilton Woods will see nearly a thousand homes and a primary school provided with low-carbon heating. Awarded £745,000, the project will also include a thermal battery, meaning excess energy generated can be fed into the National Grid.

Watford Community Housing (WCH), a not-for-profit provider of approximately 5,700 homes, gets £1.8 million to strip out old gas burners in its district network, replacing them with ground source and air source pumps. Turned toasty in consequence will be 252 flats in six blocks.

Energy efficiency minister Lord Callanan added to his boss’s words:   “Keeping homes warm with waste heat from technology is a glimpse into the future – and demonstrates just how innovative this country can be when it comes to reducing our carbon emissions.

“The £65 million we’ve awarded today will help spread this success across the country, by rolling out innovative low-carbon heating to help to drive down energy bills and deliver our Net Zero goal.”

The post The clean heat is on: Racks of data servers to render scores of thousands toasty appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Elected in 2019 for the East Surrey constituency with a 24,000 majority, Coutinho, 38, had earlier been a special advisor at HM Treasury during Rishi Sunak’s spell as Chancellor.

Since last October she had served as under-secretary of state for children, families & well-being,  following a year as minister for disabled persons at the Department for Work and Pensions.

An Oxford graduate in maths and philosophy, Coutinho’s career history includes spells at investment bank Merrill Lynch & accountants KPMG.  Before entering Parliament she worked at the Centre for Social Justice think tank.

Backing Sunak as leader last summer in the Conservatives’ internal choice versus Truss, the Brexit-voting Coutinho is on the advisory board of Onward, the Conservatives’ centrist policy group, headed by Lord Danny Finkelstein.

Sunak created D-ESNZ earlier this year, highlighting both energy’s role in the UK’s post-Ukraine security and Net Zero goals judged inadequately stressed by the old Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Issues awaiting its new boss include energy’s contribution to the continuing cost-of-living crisis, confirming Sunak’s declared enthusiasm for “hundreds” of new oil extraction licences, and defending the government’s implementation of its Net Zero agenda against increasingly restive Conservative media and backbenchers such as the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, headed by South Thanet MP Craig McKinley.

Modelling itself on the Europe Research Group instrumental in securing Brexit, McKinley’s ginger group enjoys close links to Tufton Street’s covertly funded Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Departing environment minister Lord Zac Goldsmith is among green-conscious Conservatives recently questioning Sunak’s commitment to combatting the planet’s climate catastrophe.  Declarations last month by oil minster Andrew Tweedie that Sunak’s government will press ahead to “max out” Britain’s untapped North Sea reserves increase liberal and centrist Tories’ nervousness.

Coutinho’s links to centrist Tories such as Finkelstein may be seen as Sunak’s reassurance to Conservatives on the party’s beleaguered left.

The daughter of doctors with roots in Pune, India, Coutinho was once a contestant on the TV cooking show, ‘The Taste’, in which Nigella Lawson was a judge.

The premier’s mini-reshuffle today is caused by Ben Wallace’s intention declared in July to quit as defence secretary at the next re-shuffle, after four years in the post.

Shapps, 54, had headed D-ESNZ since its formation in February, and had run D-BEIS since last October, when he replaced Jacob Rees-Mogg, incumbent under the 45-days of Liz Truss.

Shapps, Home Secretary for six days under the self-destructing Truss, now heads military policy.

In 2012 the Welwyn Hatfield MP was permitted to remain a minister under David Cameron, – whom he had backed to lead the Tories – after revelations that in his early business career, Shapps had sold “personal wealth enhancement” software online for his How to Corp brand, under the fictitious aliases “Michael Green”, “Sebastian Fox” and “Corrine Stockheath”.

Having initially threatened legal action against his accuser, a constituent named Dean Archer, Shapps admitted in 2015 he had indeed traded under a pseudonym.  He had also “over-firmly denied” having a second job while an MP, Shapps admitted.

The post Coutinho debuts as Energy Secretary, while Shapps ascends to Defence appeared first on theenergyst.com.