Cheap energy has been one of the drivers of globalised trade. Electricity and gas are supplied by national ‘grids’; both generation and transmission of electricity are multinational in ownership. Oil is globally distributed. Sources of energy for electricity have been oil, gas, coal and nuclear, sourced internationally; with a small but growing renewables sector. There is a small proportion of embedded renewables. Energy distribution systems need to combine efficiency, stability and energy security.
Negative trends
- The UK’s centralised grid system wastes two-thirds of the energy that goes in, 65% in generation processes as waste heat, and just over 7% in transmission.
- The present government seems committed to nuclear power, which would not meet CO2 targets in time and diverts money away from potentially huge programmes of energy efficiency and renewables.
- The West Midlands could not produce enough fuel crops within our ecological or geographical footprint to continue our over-use of transport fuels.
- The Regional Assembly’s Regional Energy Strategy states it cannot meet the government’s paltry 10% renewables obligation due to having no coastline. Although the agenda has moved on considerably since this strategy was written, it has not yet been updated.
- One barrier to maximising the potential of decentralised renewables for electricity is efficient and readily available energy storage. This needs further investigation. Also Feed-in tariffs.
- The installation of renewables in social housing on a large scale, as happened at Summerfield, Birmingham, is not replicable without a major change in the financing infrastructure as it took hefty amounts of Neighbourhood Renewal Funding.
- Energy from Waste can damage resource efficiency by creating a demand for burning materials that could be locally reused or minimised. See also manufacturing section.
Positive trends, good practice and opportunities
- While in the past, remote rural areas of the region being off the gas grid may have been a disadvantage, there could be advantages in that their abilities to think about alternative fuels and their community fuel security are more practised.
- Particular for electricity, decentralised energy networks are more efficient and have better financial benefits. A decentralised system waste less in transmission and allows smaller generating plants to use the heat locally (piped to homes and other spaces) as well as the electricity generated. There are currently no offgrid networks such as the one at Woking in the West Midlands but these could be encouraged. Birmingham has installed two on-grid combined heat and power plants; this technology is growing fast. Capturing and using heat where it is a by-product of any other process (egg a manufacturing process) is also a feasible solution.
- Embedded renewables are efficient if the demand is right, as less is wasted in transmission.
- Climate change bill commitments, Code for Sustainable Homes and the energy performance directive all support a more efficient way forward.
- There are significant commitments to a low carbon economy in terms of both technology and personal behaviour in the Regional Economic Strategy. Agencies such as the Marches Energy Agency provide strong local expertise in low carbon, localised energy systems.
- The emergence of Transition towns, community energy saving initiatives and low carbon villages provides a massive vehicle for behaviour change.
- Public awareness from local energy supply: if people can see the production of energy in their own community, it reduces the ‘someone else’s problem’ attitude that many have towards responsibility for the energy we all use.
- Given our lack of coastline, the West Midlands’s biggest renewables asset is its potential for biomass particularly waste biodigestion: biogas from sewage and food waste could replace the natural gas we currently use – due to agriculture and high density centres of population. The region has biogas expertise in the form of biogas company Greenfinch, based in Shropshire. Unlike ‘energy from waste’ incineration, biodigestion can take create a closed loop system and produce a natural soil conditioner in the process.
- Eccleshall, Staffordshire, has a biomass power plant fuelled by locally grown miscanthus; it was installed by Talbotts , a Staffordshire-based specialist biomass company. Several West Midlands rural schools have installed biomass burners and there is a fuel-crop-powered CHP plant at Harper Adams Agricultural College.
- Rapeseed, as part of mixed, rotation farming, is being used to provide biomass as a byproduct of the food crop, which minimises the fuel’s footprint.
- Biodiesel from used cooking oil is produced on a small scale within the region and is an excellent re-use of resources, but risky and expensive on a commercial basis according to a Birmingham study ; other biodiesel production in the region is made from virgin oil sourced non-locally. Production companies sited here could take more advantage of local materials and markets.
- The Green New Deal approach provides funding mechanisms for energy efficiency and local renewables.
- Decentralised power can be owned by the community more easily, which again means some taking of responsibility but can also mean getting the financial and security benefits.
- Rising transportation costs may make more localised manufacture of renewable technologies more viable (this is also a pillar of the RES): wind turbines could replace the area’s automotive industry; solar photovoltaics (including solar tiles) and similar.
- East Birmingham Community Energy Company has proposals for locally owned renewables, including an innovative idea for low-cost solar ‘hire purchase’.
- Social enterprises around the region offer domestic energy efficiency services at affordable prices. In particular, Birmingham Social Enterprise Energy Network is delivering job creation within social enterprises for delivering energy efficiency work for individuals and housing associations.
- Local ownership models: Embedded renewables are locally owned; community ownership models of on-grid electricity generation are also sometimes practicable. CHP plants such as those within Eastside and at Woking tend to need a major backer and be outside the scope of pure community ownership. For practical reasons it tends to work better that the community own a share in a bigger renewables development. One of four wind turbines on the proposed at Reeves Hill Wind Farm in Herefordshire is planned to be owned by a community co-operative so that there is a community stake. Energy4all provides the expertise on this.
Potential recommendations