Energy, Environment and Sustainability Group
The event was hosted by Staffs Chamber of Commerce and most of the debate was about how local business would meet its energy needs in the future. There were representatives from British Ceramics Confederation, Steelite, Johnsons Tiles, Mantec Group and Michelin and also from National Grid, The Crown Estate and Electricity NW (DNO). Joan Whalley, MP for Stoke on Trent North attended. Before I attended the event I knew that she is Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee; they’ve done some interesting work on over-valuation of fossil fuel companies (will they be allowed to take it out of the ground? BlackRock/FTSE have just launched a non-fossil-fuel index) and energy subsidies[1][2][3]. Maybe EESG/IMechE should have had some input to the latter?
Opening remarks were from the British Ceramics Confederation who said they were concerned about cost and availability of energy in the future, particularly gas, as they need it to fire their big ovens. However, another representative from the sector said that they’d actually made really good progress on energy efficiency as they’d signed a Climate Change Agreement (CCA) ie agreement to reduce energy use in exchange for reduced climate change levy (CCL). He felt that the next step was to deploy new technology and the sector was looking at that; it could mean electric rather than gas fired ovens.
Recent applications for wind turbines on local industrial sites had been turned down by Staffordshire County Council. A suggestion was made that community investment in wind energy etc could help with the planning process.
The government has recently published a community energy strategy, hoping to encourage community investment, ownership etc. Michelin said that they’d installed wind turbines on their sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland but had had no luck in England. However, the appointment of an energy manager had resulted in 20% energy savings.
The point was made that most of the discussion was on energy supply and generation and that energy reduction had taken a back seat over recent years. A discussion ensued on cost effective energy reduction investments. Electricity NW said that connecting new capacity to the local distribution network could be a problem because of the requirements of existing capacity; they are required to have extra available so that they can accommodate the adjacent grid requirements if it fails. However, if a customer is prepared to slightly reduce the availability eg interruptible supply, then they can connect quickly and have done so in certain circumstances eg electric vehicle charging points in a supermarket car park.
The representative from Stoke on Trent city council said they are installing a district heating network but it is proving difficult to retrofit it because of the existing infrastructure.
The conclusion was that we should re-focus on energy reduction and seek to encourage community investment.
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References
[1] http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/environmental-audit-committee/news/green-finance-por-substantive/
[2] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmenvaud/61/6102.htm
[3] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmenvaud/61/61vw01.htm