In 1978, the UK’s Solar Trade Association (STA) was formed to focus on solar water heating.  This year it celebrates its 40^th anniversary with a chance to reflect the progress made and the future ahead. Over 200,000 solar thermal systems have been installed in the UK during its operation and there are now around 140 STA members, 57 of which are working in the solar thermal sector. “But Brexit moves closer and causes uncertainties as well for the solar thermal industry”, says Chris Hewett, STA Chief Executive.

During 2016, a UK referendum indicated that of those voting, a majority of 1.9%  were for Brexit and subsequently the 29 March 2019 has been declared ‘exit day’. There are currently ongoing negotiations about the exact detail, but current default is that from that day all (EU) primary and secondary laws  will  cease to apply to the United Kingdom. There are many uncertainties about the consequences of Brexit and like many other sectors the solar heating industry would like better clarification.

In particular for UK solar thermal, many key system components involve cross-border trade such as collectors, pumps, tanks and control equipment. Even the UK primary collector manufacturers must import much of their base materials to remain competitive. Already the UK government suggests stockpiling ahead of the ‘exit ‘day’ so as to reduce uncertainties. But many consider this unrealistic given the costs of holding stock and warehousing.

Léonie Greene, STA Director of Advocacy & New Markets, also sees very serious economic impacts caused by the Brexit.“It’s not just the uncertainty on trade tariffs or sterling value for importing & exporting, which is obviously a concern, it’s the wider impact on the UK economy & what is already a delicate domestic market. All the credible analysis points to a potentially very serious economic impact unless the Government negotiates a sensible deal in time.”

Solar PV to lose government incentives

For the UK, the general effect of Brexit through the summer is the wider government departments are now in a state of paralysis. This is in part due the difficulty in long-term planning across the ‘exit day’ but also due to a spate of recent high-level minister resignations. This has been especially negative for the associated photovoltaics industry since that sector previously relied   on the feed-In tariff (FiT) for electricity which in any case is due to stop a few days after the Brexit day in 2019. The expectation is for intensive marketing of solar PV prior to this date which will initially turn attention away from solar thermal. But after this date, there is a chance again for solar thermal because the Renewable Heat Incentive is set to remain as long-term policy support.

Greene offered further reflection that “In 2016 we fought and won a victory for solar thermal, to keep domestic solar thermal for hot water production eligible for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). Uniquely within the RHI solar thermal is also eligible for support as a second technology, if installed in combination with biomass or heat pumps.” Whilst the EU renewable energy targets spurred action here over the last decade, the UK remains behind with thermal renewables particularly with assisting space heating. There is discussion about a so-called ‘Green Brexit’ however most environmental groups have been disappointed with the current Government proposals. This idea gives the idea that the UK could bring in its own ‘greener’ laws after Brexit but so far it is a concept that has little meaning.

Communication and Complexity

She believes the great challenges for solar thermal are communication and complexity and that the RHI, for domestic and commercial, should be reformed to include contribution to space heating as well as PV-T technologies. For the domestic markets, the STA advocates a switch to a simpler grant scheme or low/zero interest loans like already available in Scotland. The UK is performing poorly on generating heat from renewable sources and will miss its own 2020 targets, so there is widespread awareness much more needs to be done.  , solar thermal will have a greater role in enabling district heating.

This text originally appeared in SolarThermalWorld.org

 Organisations mentioned in the article:

Solar Trade Association:

https://www.solar-trade.org.uk/category/solar-thermal-wg/

 

At the end of 2016 the solar thermal industry association STA campaigned successfully for solar thermal to remain in the two Renewable Heat Incentives (RHI). However, the year 2017 was so far weaker than the previous years. In the domestic RHI there were 423 residential  accredited from January to September 2017, compared to 537 in the same period of the previous year. Applications for commercial solar thermal plants were down to 19 in this same period from 36 in the previous year.  The photo shows a 155 m2 installation on the roof of the new Star Community Centre in Cardiff that opened its doors in September 2016.

Photo: Kingspan

The reasons for this poor market performance are twofold: The photovoltaics market is much stronger compared with the solar thermal domestic RHI (dRHI) with customers perceiving better tariff conditions. On average 2,980 residential PV installations were accredited over the last two quarters against only 55 residential solar thermal applications monthly.

In 2017 domestic solar thermal systems receive 0.2006 Pound Sterling (GBP) per kWh over 7 years with only minor adjustments for inflation over the year. The energy (kWh) for the dRHI is deemed by a calculation by the installer whereas the RHI (non-domestic)  is measured by a meter (see further details in the database of incentive programmes).  To compare the tariffs with the PV Feed-In incentive for sub 10 kW, this is currently receive 0.040 Pound Sterling (GBP) per generated kWh over 20 years plus 0.0503 Pound Sterling (GBP) per kWh exported to the grid.

The second reason is the stronger demand for other renewable heat technologies like air source heat pumps and biomass boilers that take together 80 % of all applications (see table 1).  Of all the dRHI technologies only solar thermal is not allowed to contribute to space heating. 

	Air source heat pump	Ground source heat pump	Biomass systems	Solar Thermal	Cumulative totals  all technologies
Cumulative totals	16,121	3,522	9,206	3,228	32,077
%	50.3%	11.0%	28.7%	10.1%

Accredited applications for the domestic RHI since the start of the programme in April 2014 through to September 2017. For Northern Ireland since March 2016 the (RHI) has been suspended to new applications for all technologies. No figures for Northern Ireland are included in these statistics.  Source: Ofgem

Solar thermal often combined with gas boiler

The UK government provided additional dRHI statistics which provide further useful characteristics of the national solar thermal market in single-family households. For example with all other dRHI technologies the majority of installations favoured away from the main natural gas network. But for solar thermal in England the majority were fitted in properties on the gas grid.  When considering the type of house that ST was fitted, the owner –occupier detached house was the most likely type even compared to all other house types added together. These included semi-detached, terraced, bungalow, flat or maisonette.  Although 78% of household ST was fitted in England, the three most likely regions were Southeast England, Southwest England and Scotland.

Overall 17,000 non-domestic renewable installations under RHI

All in all the non-domestic RHI was so far rather successful with 17,636 renewable heating systems under contract by the end of September 2017. However, only 1.6 % – 274 solar thermal systems in total – are among them  (see table below). Biomass usage is absolutely dominating this scheme. The non-residential RHI allows solar thermal fields below 200 kW and pays  0.1044 Pound Sterling (GBP) per kWh over 20 years (see further details in the database of incentive programmes).  For comparison biomass has various power thresholds from between 0.0208 to 0.0296 Pound Sterling (GBP) per kWh over 20 years with no top power limit.

	Heat Pumps	Biomass	CHP	Biogas / Biomethane	Solar Thermal	Cumulative totals all technologies
Cumulative totals	1,179	15,621	29	533	274	17,636
%	7.0%	88.6%	0.2%	3.0%	1.6%

 

Accredited applications for the non-residential RHI since the start of the programme in November 2011 through to September 2017. No figures for Northern Ireland are included in these statistics.  Source: Ofgem

This text originally appeared in SolarThermalWorld.org

 

Websites of institutions and companies mentioned in the text:

OFGEM  www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-programmes

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy   www.gov.uk/beis

 

 

Out of the long list of detractors of the recent annihilation of UK green government policies announced by the Conservative ministers, it was Professor Catherine Mitchell of Exeter University who I though put the reactions rather well: “Government support for ideological ‘blue crap’ over rationality ….  puts in jeopardy Britain’s ability to derive social, economic, security and environmental benefits ….. This simply does not add up to a credible energy policy”.

Indeed, the number of green polices cancelled or weakened over the last three months has reached the count of ten; this according to the heads of some of the main UK campaign and pressure groups when writing a joint letter to the prime minister. Here they pointed out the complete turn-around of previous ministerial pledges such as to “accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy”. With the previous administration’s green policies now so brutally savaged, it is evident these were hollow words with no subsequent substance. They have not even provided a set of replacement policies; just leaving us with uncertainty and confusion after so many diligently followed previous government direction.   

Amber Rudd MP was appointed to DECC July 2014

The ability of the Conservative ministers to at first give sweeping platitudes only thereafter to set policy details in the polar opposite direction is becoming contagious. There can be few business leaders that will put any faith in future energy announcements least of all those vying to build arguably the most expensive power station in the world, Hinckley C nuclear. No wonder the build costs are so astronomical, now at £ 24 billion; after all why would any bidder risk going in on a low tender ! The National Audi Office now intends to investigate the effect of the sizeable Sizewell C on the public purse.

As it stands, the solar industry now faces cliff-face dropping cuts in feed-in tariff support from January, the government having ignored the industry’s existing calls for a slow taper. Cue a stampede of winter installation activity of those who can just get a grid connection and funding in time. This ‘gold-rush’ activity is incompatible with any sensible capacity-building of an industry that is likely to lose 20,000 workers according to government’s own source data. The London Mayor Boris Johnson added “it would be wrong if the cut in the Feed in Tariff actually stops people from investing in solar”.

It’s not often a USA politician would comment on UK polices, but the former vice-president  Al Gore also expressed puzzlement on the green policy slaughter saying he could “… not understand the rationale for such measures, while climate change presents a clear danger to the UK and the rest of the world.” Even the Catholic Pope is talking about greenhouse gases saying the problem could “no longer be left to a future generation“. Alongside President Barack Obama said “that we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet“. This all rapidly followed by the recent Lambeth Declaration of over thirty UK faith leaders pressing the need to make the transition to a low carbon economy.

It’s a witheringly long list of high ranking personalities and organisations that have expressed astonishment on what the Conservative government has just done. Just how the current Energy minister Amber Rudd will square off this confusion of spin-versus-action at the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris will be a side-show in itself.

Rudd’s stated position is that policy is to be based on “keeping bills as low as possible for ‘hard working families and businesses.” Yet the former deputy mayor of London the Green Party’s first life peer in the House of Lords, Jenny Jones, revealed that the 2014 renewable subsidies were responsible for just £45 of the average annual household dual fuel bill. The reality of the previous increases came from the £650 increase in fuel bills associated with wholesale energy costs – quite unrelated to the so called ‘green crap’.

Why then is the government so shy when it comes to the hidden subsidies for fossil fuels estimated at about £400 for each person per annum, this not even including the current nuclear decommissioning costs of £7.9 billion in 2013/14. If such brazen ignorance of the statistics go unpunished by our ministers, then as a nation we will be forever more doomed to follow tabloid headline policy changes at a whim, pushing industry’s and government’s costs up at every twist and turn.

Perhaps Rudd and her colleagues are indeed closet climate contrarians as some suspect. Perhaps they have read that the US government scientist’s 2014 report found that despite record ocean warming and sea-level rises in line with earlier findings of the hottest year on record that these rates would continue for centuries to come even if there were immediate efforts to cut the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing these changes ? Perhaps the UK Conservative ministers really believe that despite NASA recently confirming that they’ve just had hottest five months of any year ever recorded, that human greenhouse gas mitigation is a hopeless task and that we may as well burn up any mainland gas that can be found and squeezed out by fracking ?  If there was ever any green crap, is has surely now turned blue.

First published by: http://gbezine.greenbuilding.co.uk/

 

In 2011, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a review of the generation costs of renewable electricity technologies. Onshore wind was one of the cheapest levelised costs @ £90/MWh, well on par with fossil based powers stations or new nuclear. This technology would have looked a good match to DECC’s post-election pronouncement to “keep the lights on and carbon emissions down, whilst saving consumers money on their energy bills”.

Sadly for the fledgling UK wind turbine industry, the victorious conservative party declared a “halt the spread of onshore wind farms”, a decision that will most surely put up the average of UK’s indigenous clean energy costs. With many insiders predicting that the proposed new 3.2 GW nuclear at Hinkley C will either never be built or spectacularly fail to meet its budget, it rather looks like DECC’s contractual energy promises are starting to rest upon a rather paltry 1.4 GW undersea interconnector from Norway due in 2021. I say ‘paltry’ because we are about to shut 7 GW of coal-fired stations whereas the UK demand for electricity averages nearer 36 GW. In fact more like 60 GW is need to guaranteed keeping the light on during peak demand. The supply and demand limits are getting unnervingly close to each other.

Wind turbine at RES HQ

Cue a National Grid initiative called the Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR). Generally put out to lowest tender, this has funded a series of private sub-50 MW mini power stations throughout the country. All well and good, you might think, as these appear to lie at the heart of DECC’s desire to keep the lights on. However many of these mini-power stations have now been revealed as effectively subsidised diesel ‘farms’. Albeit for short-term use for a few hours per year, these are not quite in keeping with the stated intentions with CO2 emissions. Nor is their magnitude sufficient to plug the demand gaps of GW proportions.

Hope is at hand with the recent announcements on home battery energy storage by the USA-based Tesla Motors, giving an insight into a future scenario. Previously known for their sleek electric cars, they have re-branded their purpose to be global saviours by enhancing the ability to smooth the fluctuations of supply from renewable sources like wind and solar photovoltaics (PV). As useful and appealing as the concept of home-owned energy storage is, it effectively undermines the purpose of having a national grid plus any accompanying national storage. Early USA adopters, often individualistic in approach, won’t worry too much about that, but I doubt the UK can rely on just a few wealthy individuals to provide answers to national problems.

Batteries are not new, but a big international brand getting behind home storage is. Leaving fire safety and the recyclability of battery materials aside, the financial self-interest intended to drive sales in the UK is dubious. This hasn’t stop advance USA orders reaching into a year ahead but battery storage induces a conversion loss that has to be offset by any gain with increasing self-consumption. You also need more equipment than just batteries to automatically interact with the energy sources and domestic appliances. But the real show-stopper is the lifetime of batteries at around 5000 discharge cycles, just around the point where such batteries pay for themselves at current rates. Assuming grid electric does become much more expensive, then the break-even point will shorten but let’s not forget when the grid fails, most grid-tied inverters will also switch off for safety. So those seeking full autonomy will find it is not normally viable for more than a few hours, apart from the hardiest of households. Ironically, a mini diesel generating set will provide the desired autonomy far cheaper.

With the new head of DECC vowing to “unleash a new solar (PV) revolution”, this suggests their previous target of 22 GW peak power under optimum conditions is still achievable. With battery storage this will sound appealing to the voters. But electricity represents less than 20% of the UK non-transport energy demand, with heat by far the more significant. This gives the context to the troublesome hydraulic gas fracturing, or so called ‘fracking’, which was also highlighted in the Tory manifesto. If it’s not to be oil or gas for heating the UK urban masses, then there are few other economic choices with current rates. Green builders among you will call foul, but the transition to well-insulated renewable heated homes remains a tiny niche market compared to the swathes of ageing housing in need of upgrading. The government incentives to improve this have fallen well short. For those who blanket-protest against fossils, we need to hear a detailed alternative scenario of the transition period for heating those houses. Otherwise we’d better get used to gas fracking.

The perverse situation before us, stated recently by the International Monetary Fund, is there will be an expected $5.3tn subsidy for fossil fuels worldwide in 2015. This is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments. The very same health spending that has to in part deal with atmospheric pollution and climatic disasters caused by burning those fossil fuels. I’d suggest DECC’s priorities should be reducing those fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies both nationally and internationally. Then we may well see that the true cost of renewables is capable of standing alone in the market without any subsidies either. Without the layers of administration that surrounds these subsides, resources will be freed for more important duties. Indeed, in a world without fuel subsidies, perhaps we won’t need DECC either.

The USA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), located in North Carolina, maintains the world’s largest climate data archive. Their report analysing the data from 2014 gives a snapshot of the global climate anomalies. Whilst we can accept that in any one year there can be an anomaly, the reasons for these can be complex. Never-the-less the average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for 2014 was the highest on record in the previous 135-years. This was a significant 0.7°C above the 20th century average. Climate change advocators will no doubt latch upon such statistics to verify that we do indeed have ‘global warming’.

But the same data set produces interesting contradictions. Sure enough the Artic polar ice cap was 4 % less than the 1981–2010 average. One generally assumes the warmer it is, the less ice there will be and that this would suggest a rise in average sea level. But contrary to expectations, the larger Antarctic Sea ice was 10% above the same period’s average.

A 23 kiloton tower shot called BADGER, fired on April 18, 1953 at the Nevada Test Site, as part of the Operation Upshot-Knothole nuclear test series. c/o National Nuclear Security Administration

Whilst we struggle to resolve the meaning of all this, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who created the theoretical ‘Doomsday Clock’, moved their minute-hand forward in 2015 to now show three minutes before midnight (i.e. doomsday). Whilst their indicator is influenced as much by proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as climate change, they also maintained that “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon”.

In a rare sign of unity, and possibly in response to the depth of scientific data, the UK’s three main party political leaders have now pledged to work together to combat climate change, whatever the UK general election result. In a joint statement they acknowledged that “Climate change was one of the most serious threats facing the world”.
Accordingly they have promised to “end the use of unabated coal power”.

Some would say about time since it is clear in the EU Commission’s report on ‘Subsidies and costs of EU energy’ that in 2012 coal subsides exceeded that of onshore wind. To be fair, renewable energy subsidies as a whole did fare better than the fossil fuels in the same period. Yet estimates of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide range into the order of trillion’s dollars which has led to high profile organisations such as the International Energy Agency, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to call for their removal. But what we might consider from this is there appears to be a three year lag before we get enough reliable data to judge the success of such politicians’ pledges. No wonder it is so hard to pin policy failures on the incumbents.

Arguably the biggest threat to achieving CO2 targets is the huge drop in oil prices which have halved within a year. Touted in the mainstream media as good news for consumers’ lower costs, it’s not the news that the off-grid renewable heating markets wanted to hear. Emissions from transport are also bound to increase accompanied with new car registrations at a 10-year high. Coincidentally Jonathon Porritt of Forum for the Future has declared that he and they will no longer work with Shell or BP. Porritt confirmed that “We came to the conclusion that it was impossible for today’s oil and gas majors to adapt in a timely and intelligent way to the imperative of radical decarbonisation”. It does indeed seem that the odds are stacked against an amicable change of direction for the oil companies. As published the journal Nature, to meet the notional 2oC limit on global temperatures, one third current of oil, half of gas and over 80 per cent of coal reserves will need to remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the limit. Attempts at further exploration to find reserves against this backdrop simply makes no sense.

The effect of low oil prices is a many-edged sword. High oil costs favours low CO2 alternatives whereas Governments tend to prefer low prices as the electorate enjoys its cheaper travel and heating. Yet many a tax budget now lies in tatters as the barrel price plummets. The recent independence vote for Scotland brought this to a fore. Had the separation gone ahead, a fledgling country would now be facing the advertised closures of the North Sea Brent oil and gas fields which formerly generated over £20bn of tax revenue since production began in 1976. No-doubt, oil prices will bounce back up; but there’s going to be some considerable fallout ahead.

Biomass burning has been the run-away winner in terms of end-user targeted government subsidies for heat-focussed renewables. Whether success is measured by the number of applications or amount of heat generated, the results are overwhelming within both the domestic and non-domestic aspects of the renewable heat incentive (RHI). The biomass industry will be further cheered by the consumer price indices (CPI) produced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Over the last 5 years the cost of solid fuels has barely risen against the average CPI for domestic heating fuels. Albeit the solid fuel measure being mainly derived from coal, never-the-less this all adds to a buoyant feeling of optimism from the wood burning trade which includes fuel suppliers as well as appliance manufacturers.

The combustion of wood fuel

Scratching under the surface a little, the total number of heat-focussed renewables supported particularly under ‘The Green Deal’ (GD) is extremely low. Indeed, for biomass the total can be counted one hand; no doubt affected by the need for a prior Energy Performance Certificate and visit by a Green Deal Assessor. Arguably this scheme was never targeted towards renewables but we can start to conjecture that it is principally those that can raise their own finance have been able to access the RHI. The GD is, after all, the government’s flagship for providing loans for initial domestic purchases on energy efficiency. This against a backdrop that one in three pensioners are fearful they can not to afford to heat their homes as reported by the charity Age Concern. These will in part make up some of the 6 million UK households in fuel poverty according to the Association of Conservation for Energy. In fact, having the capital to buy into biomass heating is not likely to have been an obstacle at all given there are plenty of companies offering zero up-front capital for biomass boilers. The statistics indicate that for all the funded heat-focussed renewables, the displaced fuel previously used is clearly heating oil. This will be no surprise as over the last five years, heating oil has the greatest increase of CPI over other fuels. Given that heating oil is mainly associated with rural properties, the government’s objective of target the RHI to the off-gas sector appears to being met.

None of this has been pleasing the heat pump industry who in any case, got off to a poor after suffering some early poor installations that featured in the media. Indeed several vested interests have tried their best to stymie the biomass surge. One example was from the representatives of the lignified gas producers who use their government consultation submissions to extensively undermine the case for supporting renewables.

Some of this critique is taking hold as DECC intends to introduce biomass sustainability regulations in 2015, with the obligation on RHI participants to meet the increased requirements. There are currently howls of protest from the biomass industry as the long-term plans for UK wood fuel growers are now put on hold in anticipation of the proverbial goalposts moving. Already the RHI fuel suppliers are required to register prior to implementation via an online Biomass Suppliers List (BSL). This is meant to provide end-users a postcode search facility of nearest suppliers but in reality ends up prosing fairly meaningless suggestions based on location of administrative offices rather than where the wood was originally grown or processed.

A key aspect to be decided is how biomass fuel imports will be certified which will bring further scrutiny of the definition of ‘sustainability’. This will please the like of the RSPB, Greenpeace and Friends of The Earth who made clear their concerns of the CO2 debt and effects of indirect substation in 2012 in their document ‘Dirtier than coal’. Further biomass burning critique came this year with the American publication ‘Trees, Trash, and Toxics: How Biomass Energy Has Become the New Coal’ concluding that biomass power plants across the USA are permitted to emit more pollution than comparable coal plants or commercial waste incinerators.

For schemes costing the taxpayer £ billions, we’d might have expected there would had been impact assessments to first establish beyond doubt if burning wood actually makes sense. Strange then that government have only just recently issued tenders seeking methods of calculation of biomass heating systems. DECC are reporting that existing metered biomass heating installations are not performing as efficiently as previously expected using RHI data sets. The results are indicating an under-performance of between 10% and 20%. At those levels, there are economic implications from increasing emissions and reduction of carbon savings. Poorly performing systems are also likely to have lower reliability, increased maintenance and shorter lifetimes. In 2013, biomass installation complaints were at 1 in 25 of all those received at the Renewable Energy Consumer Code (RECC). If the government doesn’t get it clear whether it thinks wood burning has in fact become the new coal, then there are likely to many more of those complaints.

The recent (2014) outgoing Energy and Climate Change minister Gregory Barker sang his own praises within his resignation letter to the Prime Minister. He suggested he had delivered “the greenest government ever” on behalf of the premier. With the UK photovoltaic (PV) market now one of the largest in Europe, at installed PV peak power of 5 GW, this claim might appear defendable. But there were plenty who welcomed this departmental change.

Take for example the views of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the body set up under the Climate Change Act to provide independent advice to Ministers on how to meet carbon targets. They suggested the Coalition’s flagship insulation programmes (Green Deal & ECO) have failed to put the UK on the right track to meet commitments on cutting greenhouse gases. This is especially due to the number of cavity wall insulations which has plunged by more than two-thirds. The indictment of Barker continued in that the CCC indicated current policies will only deliver emission reductions between 21-23% from 2013 to 2025, well short of the required 31% reduction.

Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC)

In the end, it seemed he could do no right. One of Barker’s last pronouncements was that “The Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF) was another way the Government is making it simpler and cheaper for people to stay warm and improve their homes.” Within 2 months of this vaunted scheme opening, applications were stopped overnight with no notice. Thousands are now uncertain if they will get any of the promised £7600 cashback. Many had also been expecting remuneration of their Green Deal Assessment fees from the GDHIF. Whilst it could be argued that a stampede to claim a subsidy is a sign of popular success, in the end it was a farce as a consequence of shoddy governance. The GDHIF was only there to prop up the failing Green Deal in the first place and so we got a farce upon a farce.

So no surprise that the new Labour shadow to Barker is now requesting an inquiry due to the “shocking act of incompetence by government ministers. A fund that was supposed to last the year … has run out after just six weeks”. What Barker has left behind is an insulation industry in despair, beholden to the classic incompetence of stop/start subsidies. Industry cannot grow sustainably with such erratic measures and the taxpayer has once again suffered high administration costs for little national gain.

The mismanagement at DECC has been further questioned by the MP for Stalybridge and Hyde who ascertained “beyond doubt that Ministers in DECC have totally failed to keep control of the Green Deal. Taxpayers will rightly wonder why the Government is blowing almost £3million each month to cover back-office costs that should be being handled from within the Department itself. The Tax Payers’ Alliance said the “DECC has embarked on a breath-taking spending spree with taxpayers’ money despite the blatant and fundamental problems with Green Deal“.

The new tory replacement minister, Amber Rudd, has a mess of a department to pick up. Not least the running sore of ongoing high court actions from industry. Already losing a case for the premature changes to feed-in tariff rates in 2011, fresh action is currently underway regarding the proposed change to the Renewable obligation (RO) scheme for solar ‘farms’ with a peak power greater than 5 MW. The changes are proposed from April 2015, two years earlier than originally announced. The industry is likely to give the new minster a grace period to sort the mess out leaving the incumbent Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey to currently take the flak.

DECC is by no means alone in spending taxpayer-funded time defending itself in legal actions. This summer also saw Ed Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), losing in the high court. The minster’s judgment in over-turning the decision of his own planning officer after a public enquiry into a solar ‘farm’, gave the judge “genuine doubt that he made his decision” in the way the relevant legislation required. The irony here is despite the name of his department, Pickle’ decision was anything but local in nature. It had big politics written all over it and quite counter to Barker’s claims that the government’s new solar strategy would include “easing planning requirements for larger systems and working with industry to drive down the cost of solar energy further”.

In 2012, Davey welcomed the publication of the first International Energy Efficiency Scorecard by the American Council for an Energy Efficient-Economy (ACEEE) which placed UK first out of twelve of the world’s largest economies. The rankings were based on assessment of 31 factors covering energy efficiency policies and performance across buildings, industry and transportation. By summer 2014, UK had dropped to sixth place blamed, by the report authors, on UK policy roll-backs. Given that China is now effectively more energy efficient than the UK is hardly a swan song for Barker’s departure.

Never-the-less, according the digest of UK energy statistics (DUKES), electricity generated from renewable sources in the UK in 2013 increased by 30% on a year earlier and accounted for 15% of total UK electricity generation. The total renewables including those for heat as measured by the 2009 EU Renewables Directive, accounted for 5.2 per cent of energy consumption in 2013, up from 4 % in 2012. If we are to measure ‘greenness’ of government by national energy production alone, then Barker’s self-penned accolade does hold firm. But the evidence reveals that this progress is despite government’s best efforts to do otherwise. We will need more than the change of a single minister to synchronise the actions with the words.

And so the domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (dRHI) has finally been launched, a long time after its initial consultation all the way back in 2010. Many an expectant start-up business has risen and fallen in the intervening period; a time of extensive delays and hype in which this troubled DECC initiative struggled to get off the ground. In fact, the past four years have seen whole industry sectors falling by the wayside, with the PV Feed-in Tariff grabbing headlines along with anyone with the cash to spare.

Having spent so much time gestating this scheme, one might expect that DECC would have had every chance to get the subsidy right. Indeed, we might have imagined that the dRHI would come out carefully crafted, tailored to support all the ingenious ways to heat ourselves from energy sources that we currently class as ‘renewable’. Sadly this is far from the truth.

Take solar thermal: an industry that in all its various forms was increasing its market share quite nicely right up until 2010. Solar-assisted space heating, swimming pools, air heaters and solar passive gains were all doing their part, alongside the ubiquitous pre-heating of DHW. So how strange that our MPs voted to make solar heating ineligible under the dRHI, with the lone exception of DHW support. How mystifying indeed, this assumption that anyone could discern a difference in heat source between one bath full of water and another! Yet there it is in black and white, despite all our democratic processes and history of scientific prowess. To put it plainly: thanks to the dRHI, the one solar thermal sector that needs the least help gets it all.

A domestic building with solar thermal panels added digitally using T*SOL software

But the intrigue does not stop there. To follow the lengthy paper-trail of administrative hurdles through to its conclusion is to find that those solar heating DHW systems which are eligible under the Microgeneration Scheme (MCS) are allowed to export their heat onto the roof at night. You might rightly question why certified systems might possible have inadequate controls and storage facilities  to cause a need for this in the first place? But the real craziness is that this wasted useful heat, which is first pumped into and then out of the building, will have been ‘deemed’ to receive the dRHI subsidy. Yet it is still considered perfectly sensible that other uses such as space heating are now ineligible. This is despite the fact that heat from any source which is brought into a building at a higher temperature than its surroundings will inevitably lose heat to ambient or end up down the shower drain.

What this brings into question, aside from the competence of our government departments, is what exactly the dRHI is meant to be incentivising? It’s certainly lining the pockets of a new layer of middle management, which is largely superfluous to enforcing minimum standards that in any case have been in place for decades under building regulations. Furthermore, it’s hard to see how the consumer protection on offer is greater than that provided already by the Trading Standards and Advertising Standards Authority. It’s also unclear what benefit the plethora of technical documents emanating from the MCS and scheme administrators OFGEM offer, when these were already given by the likes of the long-standing British Standards Institute. What the dRHI is not doing, in its present form, is helping the wide cross-section of renewable energy sources establish themselves. How other technologies are meant to gain a foothold against those that are now subsided is at best unclear, at worst littered with unseen fees and ‘red-tape’ such as listing in SAP under Append

We may therefore feel sympathy for the conglomerate of companies that are currently lobbying hard for inclusion of the lesser-known gas absorption heat pumps (GAHP) into the general RHI framework. The brochures make it clear that “GAHPs are unique as they utilise gas to generate renewable heat ”. Pausing for a second on this statement, we see that in one simple swoop burning gas has become ‘renewable’ on a par with solar thermal, wind turbines and wave energy. Perhaps I am old-school, but I thought that the big idea was to leave the fossils in the ground and use alternatives as the highest priority in sustaining modern human life on this planet? That’s not to say if you want to burn gas that GAHPs are not an excellent way to do it; but I am questioning if this is what should really be incentivised under the term ‘renewable’. The gas utilities are understandably enthusiastic about GAHPs; rather more than they are about those electrically-driven compressor heat pumps often marketed as a replacement for gas. These are already eligible under the dRHI and have been enthusiastically embraced by DECC, with Minister Ed Davey recently viewing a Thames water-source heat pump in London. As reported in the Independent newspaper, the minister has instructed his department to create a map of potential water sources in the UK. With a DECC target of 4.5 million heat pumps, including water-, ground- and air-source, they are giving clear backing to their preferred technology by linking it to energy security and international gas supply concerns. Davey was quoted as saying that “[y]ou never have to buy any gas” with electrical compressor heat-pumps. Either way, if we are not already confused about what is a good or a bad way to heat our buildings, then we surely will be if the GAHP lobby gets its way.

The signs that DECC will be able to incentivise the right technologies are not good. The Guardian newspaper reported the departure of 425 civil servants at DECC since January 2012, including ten who played a leading role in developing the Energy Act 2013. DECC also got it woefully and unlawfully wrong with the Feed-in Tariff, with their forecasts out by over a third-of-a-billion pounds according to the National Audit Office. At times, it appears as if every fuel source possible has got some incentive scheme behind it, each one layered with tiers of competing bureaucrats. Well; except for perhaps oil, which has struggled to find a way into the current renewable incentives despite its advocacy of plant-grown oils. No surprises then when the heating oil trade body OFTEC recently declared that the dRHI was “costly, impractical and unlikely to attract mass consumer support”. Above all they exalted that it was “only for the rich”.

Perhaps I am not the only one who believes we have a DECC omni-shambles on our hands.

Many of those renewable energy traders already signed up for relevant online forums were taken aback at the new consultation methods used by the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC). For a long time, accessing the views of civil servants has been the sole environ of special advisors and London-based trade reps. It seemed like a world of secret deals and coded messages shrouded in cloak-and-dagger mystery, all enveloped by a thick sea mist. It was truly a breath of fresh air when the embattled desk clerks of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) and Green Deal revealed themselves recently on Linked-In forums with the declared intention of public consultation. This meant that serious grievances could be aired, providing both the feeling of being listened to and some reasonably detailed responses. Should you care to look, the threaded conversations should remain available for further scrutiny. That said, these posts can be edited or removed simply on the whim of the individual who happened to first create each discussion group.

No more red tape.
Source: Department for Communities and Local Government. Accessed under Creative Commons licence.

Upon further reflection, I thought it interesting that our Government chose to reach out to their UK citizens via a Californian-run enterprise. Indeed, it would only take a break in transatlantic server communications for the whole consultation process to disappear overnight. But assuming all still remains, it is evident that DECC had sought alternative views to those of the usual suspects. And well it might, as all is not well in the home of renewable heat subsidies. Despite policies to reduce red tape, positively reams of the stuff still surround any attempt to access the precious funds. So much so that the Conservative MP for North-East Cambridgeshire, Steve Barclay, was recently featured at a constituent’s renewable energy company pledging to raise questions concerning the duplication of paperwork between the Green Deal and Microgeneration Scheme (MCS).

In one example of an annual MCS inspection, only ten minutes were actually dedicated to the quality of the installation during a seven-hour audit. During that time, the customer was not even asked about the service received from the installer or how the fitted system worked. In fact, the auditors did not even want to see the customer. Some might say that this mindless bureaucracy is a well-constructed plan to remove the smaller players in the industry, as they cannot afford to employ the extra staff needed to push mounds of useless paper around the office. Indeed, the quantity of paperwork is about to rise considerably as the domestic RHI rolls out.

According to DECC’s online responses, the domestic RHI is now to be thought of as a sophisticated grant scheme with the size of grant proportional to the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of the property. This therefore assumes that an EPC will be provided even if the householder has no intention of moving or renting. But what really irks is how much lower the EPC energy calculation can be between real-world fuel bills. Figures of up to 50% have been reported.  These are not simply errors in the algorithms of the Reduced Data Standard Assessment Procedure (RdSAP) or in the inspection itself, but could simply be because our lifestyles vary so considerably. Compare a holiday let versus a home for elderly convalescents, for example. RdSAP assumes that any primary heating is used 79 hours per week with main rooms heated to 21 degrees C and secondary rooms to 18 degrees C. So if people heat for comparatively longer or at higher temperatures than the EPC upon which their RHI will be based, they will have a lower ‘deemed’ heat demand than their actual bills. Confusion then ensues as the householder is presented with conflicting values.

Here is one example for a potential heat pump customer:

1. Existing energy bill indicates that they use 25,000kWh/yr
2. MCS calculation from an installer says they will use 30,000kWh/yr
3. EPC (which they’ve paid for to get the RHI) suggests a deeming value via RdSAP of 20,000 kWh/yr.

By the time they get the separate Green Deal Assessment as well they’ll be told to forget a heat pump anyway and replace their old oil boiler with a condensing model!All this would be resolved by using heat meters as they do in commercial RHI, but this is seen as too expensive for domestic and likely to lead to ‘gaming’ by using more heat than really needed. The example of those who leave their windows open for fresh air comes to mind. We might question who is best to judge who needs what in this context.

So in considering DECC’s lurch towards the rather inaccurate EPCs as the basis of rewarding renewable heating endeavours, this suggests there may been a high-level intervention.  According to Hansard, on 13th September 2013, shortly before he was sacked, a statement from the then-DCLG minister Mark Prisk read as follows:  “As a result of low transaction volumes […for the operation of Domestic and Non-Domestic EPC Registers] the revenue from fees for entering documents onto the Registers has not been sufficient to meet the full cost of operating the Registers. […] As a result, the Department has reluctantly agreed to make a payment of £5.7 million [to the Landmark Information Group] to cover these costs”.

So it seems that EPC turnover has needed some extra boosting to avoid further ongoing penalties from a private company. Of course, this would not have occurred in the first place if EPCs had been more rigorously embraced by DCLG at the outset. So let’s hope that the government’s new passion for creative public consultations will ensure that such strategic mistakes are not made again.

Click here to see the EcoBuild 2014 presentation given during the Advances in PV Technologies session. PV for heating and hot water: does this make sense?