Bike lanes, micro wind turbines, pneumatic garbage collection—and other ways to make urban areas more environmentally friendly.
By MICHAEL TOTTY
Can cities be part of the environmental solution instead of part of the problem?
The question isn't an idle one. Urban populations around the world are expected to soar in the next 20 years, to five billion from more than three billion today. If the current rate of urbanization holds steady, cities will account for nearly three-quarters of the world's energy demand by 2030. Most of the increase will come in rapidly developing countries like China and India; China's cities alone will have to deliver water, housing, transportation and other services to 400 million additional urban dwellers by 2030.
So, cities aren't going to have be made a little greener; they're going to have to be rethought from the ground up. The goal: compact living environments that require less resources and that get the most out of the land, water and energy they do use.
"There's going to have to be new forms of energy, new ways of delivering energy and new forms of infrastructure," says Warren Karlenzig, president of Common Current, a consulting firm on sustainable cities based in San Anselmo, Calif. "All this will be necessary to allow cities to operate the way they do now."
It wasn't long ago that the idea of using "green" and "city" in the same sentence seemed absurd. Cities were considered a blight on the environment: energy-hogging, pollution-spewing, garbage-producing environmental hellholes. But in recent years, they've begun to be seen as models of green virtue. City dwellers tend to walk more and drive less than their suburban counterparts, and dense urban development encourages transit use. Apartment living generally means lower per-household energy use.
Building on these strengths, planners and developers are devising innovative solutions to meet urbanites' energy, water, transportation and sanitation needs well into the future.
Some improvements are fairly easy, such as switching to energy-efficient LED lighting in buildings and streetlights, or setting aside bike lanes and widening sidewalks to encourage alternatives to driving (although such moves aren't without political hazards, as a recent battle over bike lanes in New York shows). Others are more ambitious, requiring new construction or even an extensive rebuilding of city infrastructure—consider what is needed to add a second set of pipes for a water-reuse system.
Some of the most ambitious projects—and the greatest source of innovative ideas—are the dozens of "eco-city" developments in the works or on drawing boards around the world. Projects like the Songdo International Business District near Incheon, South Korea, are testing grounds for the latest in green technologies.
But green initiatives aren't just found on blueprints for new cities. Chicago, for example, has about 350 green-roof projects covering more than 4.5 million square feet.
Of course, many of these initiatives can be expensive, with high up-front costs. Urban planners say savings from lower energy bills and other operational efficiencies can more than cover the added expenses, but the break-even point can be years out. Still, cities—unlike the average homeowner considering rooftop solar panels—can take a long view and make investments with a decades-long payback.
So, how can cities—old or new—take green to a new level? Here's a look at some of the ways.
District Heating In a typical office building, heating and cooling account for nearly two-thirds of total energy use. So an alternative to traditional electricity or natural-gas HVAC systems can go a long way toward making cities greener. One solution: tapping the excess heat produced by nearby utilities or industry. A network of pipes distributes the heat, which can be used for hot water, space heating and in absorption chillers to provide air conditioning in the summer. These district heating systems are considerably more efficient—capturing up to 90% of the available energy—than in-building boilers. And they can tap any number of heat sources, including high-efficiency natural-gas turbines, large-scale solar thermal systems, biomass incinerators or furnaces in a steel mill. Common in Europe, high-efficiency district heating systems are being used in South Korea's Songdo IBD and are in the plans for other eco-city developments.
Micro Wind Turbines The giant windmills that dot the countryside aren't suitable for cities, where vibrations can rattle windows and the noise would be annoying. So developers are turning to microturbines. These small generators sit atop commercial or residential buildings and are designed to take advantage of the quirks of big-city wind patterns—lots of turbulence and frequent, sudden shifts in direction. The turbines are generally small, rated at one to three kilowatts each. But when installed in arrays and combined with high-efficiency solar panels, they can generate a large share of a building's energy needs, especially when the structure is equipped with a full set of energy-saving features. A handful of companies provide micro wind systems around the world, and the devices, while more expensive per kilowatt than bigger systems, have been installed at scores of locations, including PepsiCo Inc.'s Chicago office building.
Pumped Hydro Storage/Micro Hydropower Wind and solar power are notoriously fickle, producing more power than needed at some times and less than needed at others. A city that wants to rely on such intermittent sources needs to find a way to bank that power. One technique: pumped hydroelectric storage. When wind or solar power is plentiful, electricity is used to pump water to an upper reservoir; later, when power is needed, the water is allowed to flow downhill, turning turbines in the process. (The lakes have the added benefit as open-space landscaping.) Large-scale pumped-hydro systems are increasingly used for storing energy, and many isolated towns rely on small-scale micro hydro plants to generate electricity. Adding a pumped-storage capability isn't technically difficult, but it's expensive, especially on a small scale, and current technology generally requires a large "drop," or change in elevation to produce much power—though companies are working on lower-flow hydro turbines that can work in more level settings.
Walking and Biking When it comes to transportation, dense urban areas like Manhattan already have an advantage over suburbs: By packing people, jobs and services close together, they reduce the need for many car trips and provide the density to support bus and transit services. Green-city planners do even more, designing streets so that walking is safe, convenient and interesting—with wide sidewalks, landscaping and abundant crosswalks—and providing separate designated bicycle lanes. Songdo's 1,500 acres are designed so that most shops, parks and transit stops can be reached in less than a 15-minute walk, and the city also has a 15-mile network of bike lanes.
Personal Rapid Transit Not every urban trip can be made on foot, bicycle or public transit. Cities can encourage greener auto choices by providing electric-vehicle charging stations in parking garages. A futuristic solution: personal rapid transit, or PRT—pod-like, self-powered vehicles that can carry as many as six passengers. The vehicles can travel along dedicated roadways, like an automated airport transit system, or on streets equipped with buried magnets. There are no fixed schedules or routes; passengers pick their destinations, and a central computer guides the car without intermediate stops. Although still a novelty, PRTs are operating at Heathrow International Airport near London and at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Masdar City, an eco-city development in Abu Dhabi. Masdar, however, has put on hold plans to deploy the pod cars throughout the entire planned two-square-mile development.
Pneumatic Garbage Collection Even the greenest cities produce lots of garbage, which creates two problems: collecting the trash and getting rid of it. On the collection side, a centralized waste system, using an underground network of pneumatic tubes, can replace the fleets of trucks that block traffic, tear up streets and burn fossil fuels. The tubes can collect garbage from both households and outdoor trash bins and carry it to a centralized collection and sorting facility. Though some systems handle only food waste, others are set up to handle separate streams for paper and other recyclable trash. The systems are used in scores of cities world-wide; a pneumatic trash-collection system on New York's Roosevelt Island has been in operation since 1975.
Waste to Resources Getting to zero waste is as important to cities as getting to zero carbon. This doesn't mean just encouraging residents to recycle—cities also can deploy technologies to tap the energy and other valuable resources buried in the trash. Advanced anaerobic digesters process organic garbage waste and the sludge left over from treating wastewater to produce biogas, which can be burned for energy; more common in Europe, the technology is just being deployed in the U.S. for handling municipal garbage. High-temperature plasma-arc gasifiers can consume nearly the entire waste stream, making a synthetic gas that is burned to produce electricity; the leftover slag can be used in building materials. One novel approach under consideration by the PlanIT Valley project, an eco-city development planned for northern Portugal: Aluminum cans are processed with water and energy, producing aluminum oxide and hydrogen, which can then be used to power fuel cells. But because aluminum oxide requires tremendous energy to make aluminum, it may be more economically feasible just to recycle aluminum containers.
Green Roofs Rooftops, which take up a fifth of urban surface area, can be used to support solar panels or wind turbines, but they're otherwise underutilized. Covering the tops of buildings with grasses, shrubs and other plants can deliver a host of benefits. Though often more costly than traditional coverings, green roofs can provide insulation and trim a building's heating and cooling needs. They absorb rainwater, reducing the load on storm-water systems, and filter what water does run off so it can be used for many domestic needs. They also filter air pollutants.
Mr. Totty is a news editor for The Journal Report in San Francisco. He can be reached at michael.totty@wsj.com.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R1
Monday, 12 September 2011
Biomass schemes will boost destructive timber imports, claims wood industry
Wood companies and green campaigners say subsidies to power companies threaten both jobs and rainforests
Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 September 2011 19.00 BST
Big wood companies are trying to halt Drax, RWE and others pressing ahead with a raft of lower-carbon energy schemes which would see large power stations switch from burning coal to timber.
The wood industry fears thousands of jobs in its factories will be threatened by the "green" power plans and wants government to remove the subsidies facilitating them.
Wildlife and environmental groups are also alarmed that the new biomass schemes could trigger a huge escalation in wood imports and threaten rainforests.
The Wood Panel Industries Association said: "We have already seen a 50% increase in wood prices over the last three years because of these kinds of energy developments and we do not think they should be receiving subsidies for schemes which we believe are not carbon-friendly and which will require a huge amount of imported wood to support a tenfold increase in planned capacity."
The lobbying has started ahead of a planned consultation by the Department of Energy and Climate Change into the future level of subsidy through the renewable obligation certificate (ROC) system.
The current subsidy regime for biomass and other clean technology such as wind power runs until 2013. New "banding" is being considered that will run until 2017.
A DECC spokesman said the department was aware of concerns from interest groups about a major escalation in biomass but said it had safeguards in place. "The very clear sustainability criteria we now have in place under the renewables obligation will mean we know where biomass has come from and how it has been grown.
"The UK criteria also include a minimum greenhouse gas emission saving of 60% compared with EU average fossil-fuel use, and restrictions to prevent use of land, such a primary forest and other land important on carbon or biodiversity grounds, from being converted to grow biomass. These criteria apply to both imported and UK biomass."
It is not just companies such as Canada's Norbord and Austria's Egger which are worried about the future of the British factories they run to supply the construction industry and others with wood.
The RSPB wildlife campaign group also says it is "by no means certain" biomass is a low-carbon energy source. Its new report , Bioenergy: a burning issue, says the power companies will move from a 74% dependency on British wood to an 80% dependency on imports where sustainability will be far harder to verify.
Friends of the Earth says it is also concerned about the large-scale imports of biomass wood from overseas which would be "impossible" to control and could create terrible damage through deforestation in the developing world.
The RSPB claims there are 31 biomass plants in operation but 14 more have been approved, 16 are in the planning stage and a further nine have been proposed.
Drax has been co-firing its main 4,000-megawatt plant using coal and a small amount of biomass but has talked about introducing three standalone biomass plants on the same Yorkshire site if the right subsidy regime is in place.
RWE has plans to convert its 1,050-megawatt coal-fired power station at Tilbury in Essex to run entirely on wood pellets, which would make it the UK's largest biomass plant. The German company has made clear it will import most of the wood supplies from the US.
The Biomass Energy Centre, run by the UK Forestry Commission, argues that wood derived from sustainable forests, where new trees are planted when others are cut down, releases far less carbon than traditional fossil fuels.
"The critical difference between biomass fuels and fossil fuel is that of fossil and contemporary carbon," it says. "Burning fossil fuels results in converting stable carbon sequestered millions of years ago into atmospheric carbon dioxide when the global environment has adapted to current levels.
"Burning biomass fuels, however, returns to the atmosphere contemporary carbon recently taken up by the growing plant, and currently being taken up by replacement growth."
Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 September 2011 19.00 BST
Big wood companies are trying to halt Drax, RWE and others pressing ahead with a raft of lower-carbon energy schemes which would see large power stations switch from burning coal to timber.
The wood industry fears thousands of jobs in its factories will be threatened by the "green" power plans and wants government to remove the subsidies facilitating them.
Wildlife and environmental groups are also alarmed that the new biomass schemes could trigger a huge escalation in wood imports and threaten rainforests.
The Wood Panel Industries Association said: "We have already seen a 50% increase in wood prices over the last three years because of these kinds of energy developments and we do not think they should be receiving subsidies for schemes which we believe are not carbon-friendly and which will require a huge amount of imported wood to support a tenfold increase in planned capacity."
The lobbying has started ahead of a planned consultation by the Department of Energy and Climate Change into the future level of subsidy through the renewable obligation certificate (ROC) system.
The current subsidy regime for biomass and other clean technology such as wind power runs until 2013. New "banding" is being considered that will run until 2017.
A DECC spokesman said the department was aware of concerns from interest groups about a major escalation in biomass but said it had safeguards in place. "The very clear sustainability criteria we now have in place under the renewables obligation will mean we know where biomass has come from and how it has been grown.
"The UK criteria also include a minimum greenhouse gas emission saving of 60% compared with EU average fossil-fuel use, and restrictions to prevent use of land, such a primary forest and other land important on carbon or biodiversity grounds, from being converted to grow biomass. These criteria apply to both imported and UK biomass."
It is not just companies such as Canada's Norbord and Austria's Egger which are worried about the future of the British factories they run to supply the construction industry and others with wood.
The RSPB wildlife campaign group also says it is "by no means certain" biomass is a low-carbon energy source. Its new report , Bioenergy: a burning issue, says the power companies will move from a 74% dependency on British wood to an 80% dependency on imports where sustainability will be far harder to verify.
Friends of the Earth says it is also concerned about the large-scale imports of biomass wood from overseas which would be "impossible" to control and could create terrible damage through deforestation in the developing world.
The RSPB claims there are 31 biomass plants in operation but 14 more have been approved, 16 are in the planning stage and a further nine have been proposed.
Drax has been co-firing its main 4,000-megawatt plant using coal and a small amount of biomass but has talked about introducing three standalone biomass plants on the same Yorkshire site if the right subsidy regime is in place.
RWE has plans to convert its 1,050-megawatt coal-fired power station at Tilbury in Essex to run entirely on wood pellets, which would make it the UK's largest biomass plant. The German company has made clear it will import most of the wood supplies from the US.
The Biomass Energy Centre, run by the UK Forestry Commission, argues that wood derived from sustainable forests, where new trees are planted when others are cut down, releases far less carbon than traditional fossil fuels.
"The critical difference between biomass fuels and fossil fuel is that of fossil and contemporary carbon," it says. "Burning fossil fuels results in converting stable carbon sequestered millions of years ago into atmospheric carbon dioxide when the global environment has adapted to current levels.
"Burning biomass fuels, however, returns to the atmosphere contemporary carbon recently taken up by the growing plant, and currently being taken up by replacement growth."
Thorium advocates launch pressure group
Huge optimism for thorium nuclear energy at the launch of the Weinberg Foundation
Parliamentary events are often dull affairs, but Thursday night's launch of the Weinberg Foundation – a new pressure group advocating thorium nuclear energy – was quite the opposite. I can't remember the last time I stood in a room full of people concerned about climate change that was so full of optimism.
Part of the warm glow may have been the result of a small pang of pride at the Guardian's involvement. Two of the key people behind it all – the host, Bryony Worthington, and the keynote speaker, nuclear engineer Kirk Sorensen – met at the Manchester Report, a Guardian event on climate solutions. Worthington was on the judging panel; Sorensen was advocating a little-known nuclear reactor design based on liquid thorium fuel.
In the two years since, Worthington has been appointed to the House of Lords and Sorensen quit his day job to set up FLIBE energy, a company dedicated to commercialising liquid-fluoride thorium reactors. Their collective enthusiasm for the technology played a key role in the creation of the Weinberg Foundation, which was set up "to drive awareness, research and commercialisation of cleaner and safer nuclear technologies, fuelled by thorium."
The idea is to create a new generation of nuclear reactors based on the element thorium, as opposed to the uranium used to produce nuclear power today. Thorium, its advocates claim, is beneficial not only because it's far more abundant and widely distributed in the Earth's crust than uranium; in addition, liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) could theoretically be much smaller, much cheaper and much safer than conventional nuclear reactors. The waste they produce would remain dangerous for a far shorter period and, crucially, couldn't be used to create nuclear weapons. As a bonus, these fourth-generation nuclear plants could even burn up the dangerous plutonium stored in existing nuclear waste stockpiles, using it as a fuel. The Weinberg team is already talking to Sellafield about this idea.
LFTRs aren't the only way to use thorium to create energy. In a solid-oxide form, thorium can be used in existing, conventional light-water reactors. But that has a number of downsides, including the fact that it converts only a tiny proportion of the energy in the fuel into electricity. Particle physicists such as Nobel-prize-winner Carlo Rubbia have also advocated the use of sub-critical accelerator-driven thorium reactors, but this remains in the realm of scientific theory rather than nuclear engineering.
By contrast, liquid-fluoride thorium reactors are not just efficient but also proven – albeit some time ago. The US military produced a working prototype more than half a century ago at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee. It ran for a number of years before the programme was suddenly shut down and the US government's stocks of thorium buried. The most likely reason for this decision, it seems, is that LFTRs – unlike uranium reactors – didn't go hand-in-hand with nuclear weapons production.
The speakers at last night's launch included Richard Weinberg, son of Alvin, the new foundation's namesake and the man who led the Oak Ridge thorium project until its untimely demise. He is also credited with designing the uranium pressurised water reactor that dominates today's nuclear industry, being one of the first scientists to warn about the risks of CO2 emissions and writing eloquently on how science and policy connect.
There's no way to know whether LFTR technology will live up to its promoters' vision of safe mini reactors rolling off production lines in the 2020s at low enough prices – and in sufficient quantities – to completely change the global energy and emissions picture. But what I've found striking discussing and reading about the technology over the past few years is that no one seems to disagree that it's a good idea. There's no obvious scientific case why it couldn't work, and even many of the traditionally anti-nuclear green groups seem to be cautiously in favour – a point emphasised last night when Craig Bennett, policy and campaigns director of Friends of the Earth, said he supported thorium research and wished the Weinberg group the best of luck. However, the NGO's head of science, policy and research wrote in a blogpost earlier this year that "thorium nuclear reactors aren't going to be ready in time [to avoid dangerous climate change]."
Launching an advocacy group and winning support in principle is only a first step, of course. The harder bit will be persuading governments or investors to stump up the millions or billions needed to get the technology back up and running in prototype – and then commercialised.
Parliamentary events are often dull affairs, but Thursday night's launch of the Weinberg Foundation – a new pressure group advocating thorium nuclear energy – was quite the opposite. I can't remember the last time I stood in a room full of people concerned about climate change that was so full of optimism.
Part of the warm glow may have been the result of a small pang of pride at the Guardian's involvement. Two of the key people behind it all – the host, Bryony Worthington, and the keynote speaker, nuclear engineer Kirk Sorensen – met at the Manchester Report, a Guardian event on climate solutions. Worthington was on the judging panel; Sorensen was advocating a little-known nuclear reactor design based on liquid thorium fuel.
In the two years since, Worthington has been appointed to the House of Lords and Sorensen quit his day job to set up FLIBE energy, a company dedicated to commercialising liquid-fluoride thorium reactors. Their collective enthusiasm for the technology played a key role in the creation of the Weinberg Foundation, which was set up "to drive awareness, research and commercialisation of cleaner and safer nuclear technologies, fuelled by thorium."
The idea is to create a new generation of nuclear reactors based on the element thorium, as opposed to the uranium used to produce nuclear power today. Thorium, its advocates claim, is beneficial not only because it's far more abundant and widely distributed in the Earth's crust than uranium; in addition, liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) could theoretically be much smaller, much cheaper and much safer than conventional nuclear reactors. The waste they produce would remain dangerous for a far shorter period and, crucially, couldn't be used to create nuclear weapons. As a bonus, these fourth-generation nuclear plants could even burn up the dangerous plutonium stored in existing nuclear waste stockpiles, using it as a fuel. The Weinberg team is already talking to Sellafield about this idea.
LFTRs aren't the only way to use thorium to create energy. In a solid-oxide form, thorium can be used in existing, conventional light-water reactors. But that has a number of downsides, including the fact that it converts only a tiny proportion of the energy in the fuel into electricity. Particle physicists such as Nobel-prize-winner Carlo Rubbia have also advocated the use of sub-critical accelerator-driven thorium reactors, but this remains in the realm of scientific theory rather than nuclear engineering.
By contrast, liquid-fluoride thorium reactors are not just efficient but also proven – albeit some time ago. The US military produced a working prototype more than half a century ago at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee. It ran for a number of years before the programme was suddenly shut down and the US government's stocks of thorium buried. The most likely reason for this decision, it seems, is that LFTRs – unlike uranium reactors – didn't go hand-in-hand with nuclear weapons production.
The speakers at last night's launch included Richard Weinberg, son of Alvin, the new foundation's namesake and the man who led the Oak Ridge thorium project until its untimely demise. He is also credited with designing the uranium pressurised water reactor that dominates today's nuclear industry, being one of the first scientists to warn about the risks of CO2 emissions and writing eloquently on how science and policy connect.
There's no way to know whether LFTR technology will live up to its promoters' vision of safe mini reactors rolling off production lines in the 2020s at low enough prices – and in sufficient quantities – to completely change the global energy and emissions picture. But what I've found striking discussing and reading about the technology over the past few years is that no one seems to disagree that it's a good idea. There's no obvious scientific case why it couldn't work, and even many of the traditionally anti-nuclear green groups seem to be cautiously in favour – a point emphasised last night when Craig Bennett, policy and campaigns director of Friends of the Earth, said he supported thorium research and wished the Weinberg group the best of luck. However, the NGO's head of science, policy and research wrote in a blogpost earlier this year that "thorium nuclear reactors aren't going to be ready in time [to avoid dangerous climate change]."
Launching an advocacy group and winning support in principle is only a first step, of course. The harder bit will be persuading governments or investors to stump up the millions or billions needed to get the technology back up and running in prototype – and then commercialised.
Sheffield solar power sees city top table for renewable energy installation
Steel city has added the most renewable energy production per head since introduction of feed-in tariffs last year
Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 September 2011 00.48 BST
Sheffield shines out as the soar-away winner of the solar stakes in the UK, with more solar power generation added in the city per household than in any other British city, according to a league table published on Monday.
Northern cities have been the unexpected winners from the boom in renewable energy that has followed the introduction of feed-in tariffs to pay for power generated by households, which are popular as they offer a guaranteed income stream as well as free electricity.
Nearly 2 megawatts of capacity have been added in Sheffield in the last 15 months, and Leeds comes second in the league table, with more than 1MW of capacity added. They are followed – though at quite a distance – by Bristol, Bradford and Birmingham, when renewable energy installations per person are counted.
London has added more renewable power than anywhere else, with more than 3.2 megawatts of capacity added in the 15 months since feed-in tariffs became available. But when assessed per head, it comes only sixth in the UK.
Sheffield has benefitted from a strong push by the local council to encourage the take-up of renewable power, and in particular by plans to give people living in social housing access to the technology, said Colin McNaught, knowledge leader on renewable energy for AEA Group, which carried out the research on which the league table is based.
He said that the unexpected success of northern cities in installing new renewable power flew in the face of expectations that the south would benefit most from photovoltaic installations.
McNaught said the boom was likely to continue, both in terms of domestic solar power installations and in bigger renewable energy projects. He said that there had been a marked increase in applications for large-scale solar parks, since the government announced recently that only large scale installations begun before August would be eligible for the higher rate of feed-in tariff.
McNaught predicted that this would result in much more generating capacity being registered in the coming months, and he pointed to a new £100m fund to be offered by Barclays Bank to assist farmers to finance renewable energy projects.
Around the UK, in the first 15 months to 30 June 2011, more than 160MW of low carbon electricity generation has been applied for under the feed-in tariff scheme, with a total of 44,460 separate installations, according to data collated by the electricity regulator Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. About three quarters of the installations are solar power, though in Scotland wind is predominant.
AEA, an energy and environmental consultancy, has calculated the rate of growth in capacity in microgeneration at about 400% since the feed-in tariff was launched in April 2010. Photovoltaic technology – solar panels – have been at the forefront, with an increase in generating capacity of about 900%, though part of this was owing to the pent-up demand as households delayed putting up panels until the feed-in tariffs came into force. Over the same period, wind generation and hydro electricity – some smaller installations of which also qualify for the enhanced feed-in tariffs - have also grown strongly.
Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 September 2011 00.48 BST
Sheffield shines out as the soar-away winner of the solar stakes in the UK, with more solar power generation added in the city per household than in any other British city, according to a league table published on Monday.
Northern cities have been the unexpected winners from the boom in renewable energy that has followed the introduction of feed-in tariffs to pay for power generated by households, which are popular as they offer a guaranteed income stream as well as free electricity.
Nearly 2 megawatts of capacity have been added in Sheffield in the last 15 months, and Leeds comes second in the league table, with more than 1MW of capacity added. They are followed – though at quite a distance – by Bristol, Bradford and Birmingham, when renewable energy installations per person are counted.
London has added more renewable power than anywhere else, with more than 3.2 megawatts of capacity added in the 15 months since feed-in tariffs became available. But when assessed per head, it comes only sixth in the UK.
Sheffield has benefitted from a strong push by the local council to encourage the take-up of renewable power, and in particular by plans to give people living in social housing access to the technology, said Colin McNaught, knowledge leader on renewable energy for AEA Group, which carried out the research on which the league table is based.
He said that the unexpected success of northern cities in installing new renewable power flew in the face of expectations that the south would benefit most from photovoltaic installations.
McNaught said the boom was likely to continue, both in terms of domestic solar power installations and in bigger renewable energy projects. He said that there had been a marked increase in applications for large-scale solar parks, since the government announced recently that only large scale installations begun before August would be eligible for the higher rate of feed-in tariff.
McNaught predicted that this would result in much more generating capacity being registered in the coming months, and he pointed to a new £100m fund to be offered by Barclays Bank to assist farmers to finance renewable energy projects.
Around the UK, in the first 15 months to 30 June 2011, more than 160MW of low carbon electricity generation has been applied for under the feed-in tariff scheme, with a total of 44,460 separate installations, according to data collated by the electricity regulator Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. About three quarters of the installations are solar power, though in Scotland wind is predominant.
AEA, an energy and environmental consultancy, has calculated the rate of growth in capacity in microgeneration at about 400% since the feed-in tariff was launched in April 2010. Photovoltaic technology – solar panels – have been at the forefront, with an increase in generating capacity of about 900%, though part of this was owing to the pent-up demand as households delayed putting up panels until the feed-in tariffs came into force. Over the same period, wind generation and hydro electricity – some smaller installations of which also qualify for the enhanced feed-in tariffs - have also grown strongly.
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