Some countries generate as much as 40% of energy for heating through biomass fuels but it’s less than 1% in the UK – reason enough to predict a huge role for biomass in helping meet the UK’s renewable energy goals.
Imagine sharing your hot water supply with neighbours linked to a huge ring main as part of a local district heating system – and all fuelled by biomass boilers.
Biomass – or, according to one definition, “organic matter that was living recently” which could be anything from “wood to sewage sludge, animal slurries and crops grown for energy purposes” – is still only just taking off in the UK. However, over the past 15 years, such systems have been widely adopted in Austria, Germany, Denmark and elsewhere. In fact, Austria takes a staggering 40% of its heating from renewable energy sources – by contrast, the UK has been slow to pick up the biomass baton and takes less than 1%.
This is where the Carbon Trust comes in as a pump primer for new ideas and private sector firms looking to adopt new technologies needed to take the place of the UK’s now dwindling gas and oil reserves. Founded in 2001, the Carbon Trust is an independent company set up and funded by the government in response to the threat from climate change. Its remit is to speed up the move to a low carbon economy by working with private companies and public sector organisations to reduce carbon emissions now and develop commercial low-carbon technologies for the future.
One of its key private/public sector initiatives is the biomass heat accelerator programme, which aims to increase use of biomass energy. It works with biomass heating equipment suppliers to cut costs and reduce risks in the fuel supply chain and promotes awareness and understanding of the new technology among companies and institutions. Biomass is much further down the line than other technologies like wave power but many businesses still need to be made aware of its huge potential for reducing heating bills, a key part of the programme’s work.
“Quite often we’re working with private companies to develop the technologies, help them work better or work at all,” says the Carbon Trust’s technology acceleration manager, Keiran Allen. “But we also support companies starting to use the technology [see panel below] – energy-efficient products providing more efficient lighting, boilers, refrigeration, insulation etc.”
In January when the Carbon Trust launched its handbook, Biomass Heating: A Practical Guide for Potential Users, its director of innovations, Mark Williamson, stressed that “renewable heating will need to play a key role in meeting the UK’s renewable energy targets, and biomass offers the greatest potential to contribute to this.”
In its UK Renewable Energy Strategy white paper, published this July, the government spells out a big role for biomass in helping meet a renewable energy target of up to 14% of the UK’s heating needs by 2020. In fact, using biomass makes remarkable sense – carbon is first taken out of the atmosphere by plants during growth and then put back through burning. Net carbon emissions are minimal. “Biomass technology in its early stages,” says Allen. “There are very few people in the UK doing this. It is an early adopters’ technology market.”
Since its launch, the Carbon Trust has advised 75% of the FTSE 100 companies and tens of thousands of other business and public sector organisations. It has helped clients save 23m tonnes of carbon emissions and made direct cost savings of £1.4bn, supporting a wide range of new, innovative, low-carbon technologies alongside biomass. Customers big and small range from Hilton, Morrison’s and the Royal Mail through to many small businesses, hospitals and local authorities.
But to innovate or adopt these technologies requires information, expertise, research capacity and, more often than not, funding. “If you have an energy spend of more than £50,000 annually, companies and institutions can qualify for a free Carbon Trust survey which identifies ways of saving energy and money,” says Allen. “If a company wants to take it to the next level, it can co-fund a project with the Carbon Trust, funding more advice and surveys on site, specifying solutions in more detail and working out costs of design work and implementing the project.”
At implementation stage, the Carbon Trust offers interest-free loans up to £400,000. Recipients have to be small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and loans are paid back over the time during which new energy savings accrued by the company will have offset the cost of the loan. As Allen says: “As an unsecured, interest-free loan in the current economic climate, it’s a real no brainer for businesses that have high energy spend.”
Switching over
Making fuel while the sun shines
Acres and acres of 4 metre-high miscanthus (elephant) grass sway in the wind and stretch away into the distance. It’s harvest time, but at a different time of year to food crops, meaning expensive machinery normally lying redundant for many months can be used to process the crop. It is a product that guarantees a fast-growing, almost never-ending supply of renewable, almost carbon-neutral fuel to supply a biomass boiler that can heat glass houses as far as the eye can see …
But no, this is still a dream for Lincolnshire nurseryman Robert Bell. This sort of sustainable, low-carbon solution to the UK’s energy problems is not yet feasible, but in a few years it may well become reality for private and public sector organisations across the UK.
Bell, who heads up a 50-year-old family-owned nursery supplying bedding and potting plants to garden centres and supermarkets, is secure in the knowledge that he has already cheated the fuel crisis. In 2006, at least a year before fuel prices rocketed, he took the brave but vital step of switching over from heating oil to sustainable biomass fuels as his primary heating source. The nursery is now one of only three or four horticultural businesses nationwide using biomass.
Several years ago, Bell Bros Nurseries, based near Boston, had a huge problem. Business was becoming increasingly tough due to sharply increasing fuel costs. It was using 250,000 litres of gas oil to heat 8 acres of glass houses at a constant 21C during winter and early spring; it had to find a cheaper alternative.
“We were very concerned about all the oil we were using,” says Bell. The problem was they were ahead of their time and sustainable fuels had not yet risen up the UK’s political agenda. “We had no one to talk to in the UK when we started. Our concern was getting the right equipment to get sustainable fuels for the future.”
Research started back in 2003 with a walk round a farm producing miscanthus grass. The key question worrying Bell was: could any existing kit heat his glass houses cheaply enough to keep his business viable?
Bell teamed up with the consultancy Rural Energy Ltd, which in turn called in the Carbon Trust to help in offering advice and monitoring the project. He began researching in Europe, including trips to Austria, the European leader in biomass energy use. There he found his answer. Austrian businesses and consumers had been successfully using the sort of equipment he needed for several years – they were thinking “biomass” at least a decade earlier than most countries.
In October 2007, the nursery took the plunge and installed a 2-megawatt biomass boiler. “It can burn both wet and dry fuel and can use almost anything available,” says Rural Energy’s Richard Harvey: hedge trimmings from the local council, off-cuts from the timber factories on Boston docks, material from conifer woodlands, which is then all converted into woodchip and fed automatically into the boiler.
The result has been an annual 40% saving on previous heating costs and a 2,500-tonne cut in carbon emissions each year. The nursery now only uses heating oil as a back-up system – with annual use radically reduced to10,000-20,000 litres.
The installation was part-funded by a government grant of 17.5% of the capital cost. The Carbon Trust also helped the nursery benefit from the government’s enhanced capital allowance tax scheme. “We got 100% tax relief on equipment,” says Bell. “You have to qualify by registering your boiler and the equipment.” He says the biomass scheme will pay for itself within five years of its launch.
How would he advise others aiming to switch to biomass? “People going forward will be in a much better position than we were. The Carbon Trust will play a big part in the process for anyone looking for administration, funding and information. Government documentation is clearer and then there’s its white paper, The UK Renewable Energy Strategy – we’re on page 158! We did a lot of research into fuel and energy costs. The key thing for us was studying the form – ensuring it’s viable.”
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
09 October 2009, 11:14 pm
Unete a nosostros y combate el cambio climatico con Industrias Planeta, contacto inmediato en ffi@industriasplaneta.com Presente en mas de 220 paises y territorios. Cualquier Industria de Combustibles. Comienza a Generar Dinero ya!
–
Join Us to fight global warming with Industrias Planeta, immediately contact ffi@industriasplaneta.com, Present in over 220 countries and territories. Any Fuel Industry. Generate Money Now!