One of the biggest challenges around generating additional renewable energy across the built environment is location. What can be achieved in rural areas compared with urban city centres is something of a paradox. So said Tanja Groth, director of Carbon Limiting Technologies, as a panel of experts congregated at EG’s ESG summit to consider how some of the major barriers to generating renewables can be overcome.
The experts
- John Davies, head of sustainability, Derwent London
- Tanja Groth, director, Carbon Limiting Technologies
- Anne Johnstone, head of ESG, Vital Energi
- Stuart Patience, director, Hollis
“I come from a very small, rural island in Denmark,” said Groth. “We call it energy island. We transitioned to 100% renewable energy between 1997 and 2007, 70% of which was community energy financed. Having moved around since and been in London for the past 10 years, the difference is stark.”
Replicating the agile transition to renewable energy seen in smaller, decentralised locations is far more challenging in heavily populated, urban hubs for a number of reasons, said Groth. But whether it is down to legislative confusion, a dearth of relevant skills and expertise or a scepticism around the technology and processes behind a shift towards renewables, the issue underpinning all of these barriers boils down to one thing: constraints of scale.
The panel kicked off discussions by tackling the issue of grid capacity – arguably the biggest hurdle faced when it comes to rolling out renewable energy schemes in urban locations – before the conversation moved on to consider whether a new tranche of developers will take matters into their own hands by becoming energy producers themselves.
Getting on the grid
“Grid constraints are a huge problem,” said Anne Johnstone, head of ESG at Vital Energi, which provides low-carbon energy generation, distribution and management. Referring to schemes such as district heating, which supplies low-carbon heat in a centralised location and distributes it to homes and businesses in the local area, she said grid capacity is a significant barrier to progress on a large scale.
“District heat is one of the things that we do and right now you could be waiting 12 to 15 years before you get a grid connection,” said Johnstone. “That’s your net-zero strategy out the window if you are relying on on-site renewables to get you there. Things are so disparate at the moment.”
Johnstone was quick to add that despite the current problems being faced around how renewables deployment is scaled, solutions can be found and there are pockets of progress dotted around the country.
“The UK does actually have over 17,000 district heat networks at the moment,” she said, highlighting a scheme in Leeds. Leeds Pipes comprises 26.5km of district heat network which takes heat from a waste plant and distributes it across the whole city centre and up into the north of Leeds.
“When you see great examples like this, and cities like Copenhagen which are almost entirely run on district heat networks, you can’t help but think there is absolutely no reason why we can’t do it more widely,” Johnstone added. “We have to just actually do it.”
This is where planning should come in, added Groth. “Why can’t we simplify things with rules and planning regulations where you have to justify why you don’t do something? There needs to be an institutionalised hierarchy for heating needs. So, for example, you have to justify why you are not putting in district heating as a starter for 10 then you drop down to individual heat pumps and you have to go all the way down the hierarchy if you want to be putting in gas boilers. I think planning can help simplify a lot of these things.”
Stuart Patience, director of Hollis, said the solar and photovoltaic side of renewables, just like district heating, was suffering due to challenges around connections to the grid. The hope, he said, was that changes to the grid application process would help overcome some of these issues, as well as the launch of National Heat Maps software.
He said: “It would be really good if we could get a system here like the one in Holland, where you can log in and see what the chances are of getting a grid connection within minutes as opposed to waiting for months and months.”
He added that other issues included seeing newer buildings “designed within an inch of their lives to cut down on costs” unable to take the additional weight of solar PVs on the roof. A lot of the older buildings are actually more fit for purpose on this front, he added. “We are working with architects to make sure newer buildings are designed either with solar PV on or with the ability to add solar PV afterwards without any major structural reinforcement challenges.”
The other major problem, he said, is around finding good contractors in the market. There is no standard or certification scheme for contractors operating on systems above 50kw, which most commercial systems are.
“That has led to there being some pretty bad contractors in the market,” said Patience. “This requires a lot of due diligence to ensure those contractors that are out there are fit for purpose.
Taking it seriously
The myriad problems around grid connections, building structure and a dearth of skills aside, the real estate sector is largely ready to take a transition to renewables seriously.
Derwent London’s focus on net zero had not only prompted the developer to ask more questions about the electricity and gas they buy but to make moves to become an energy producer.
“Our Lochaulds Farm site, three miles north of Glasgow, is a 100-acre, 18.4 mW site which will be built out shortly and will gives us around 50% of our managed portfolio electrical needs here in London,” said Derwent London’s head of sustainability John Davies.
The company’s decision to move into the energy field was driven by occupiers, he added. “Many of our occupiers buy their energy through our service charges so they are not in control of the power they buy. So they ask us if it’s renewable and we can give them evidence that, to a level, yes it is and it is on a renewable tariff but we wanted to do more. We hope what we are doing will enable them to have a stake in the provenance of the electricity they are corporately buying. That led us then to start thinking that this is where a lot of the real estate sector might need to go to secure renewable electricity or, indeed, energy. Particularly here in London, where the infrastructure is starting to creak.”
He referred to previous conversations around planning, adding that while he agreed it was right for renewables to be pushed through the planning system, there were limitations around what the real estate sector can actually do. “The frustration for us as developers is that we ask the question around renewables all the time and are told ‘you can’t have that’.” He said real estate and asset owners should start thinking seriously about playing more of a part in the infrastructure to get more control over the situation as opposed to being “the requester and recipient” of the energy.
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Image © Telling Photography
