Microgeneration research – Professor Chesshire’s road map

Some excellent and important research has been done on microgeneration by a consortium of the Department of Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform as well as various large public and private organisations, under the chairmanship of Professor John Chesshire whose committee included some eminent experts. The ground work for the research was undertaken by Element Energy Limited, a low carbon consultancy and this report comprises the most accurate snapshot of the state of microgeneration in the United Kingdom today.

I should say that I have a great deal of time for Professor Chesshire. He is a past president of the Institute of Energy and does very important work for the Partnership for Energy Efficiency in Homes. He also was kind enough to write a review of my book, the Energy Age, for which I shall always be grateful.

The report is called “the Growth Potential for Microgeneration in England Wales and Scotland” and provides some compelling evidence about the need for microgeneration in terms of a low carbon economy. If the report’s optimistic scenarios about microgeneration prove true, then in 22 years time microgeneration would have done the equivalent of removing all emissions from all heavy goods vehicles and buses in the United Kingdom.

I will concentrate on the solar thermal aspects of the report, but reading the whole report is worthwhile and will provide a more accurate idea of the authors’ conclusions than I can summarise here. You can download it at http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file46003.pdf

The starting point is the most accurate estimate of microgeneration technologies installed in the United Kingdom to date – around 98,000 installations. The authors found that most of these installations were solar thermal (described as solar water heating) systems, which account for around 91,000 installations. The remaining are heat pumps, combined heat and power systems, biomass boilers and small wind turbines and photovoltaic systems. Together these save around 30,000 tonnes of carbon each year.

They conclude that the poor government support of microgeneration (comprising of eleven policy measures spread over five Government Departments) has not been of sufficient scale to promote a mass uptake of microgeneration so far. The report concludes that capital grant programs (or subsidies) are a poor tool to encourage microgeneration take up and create a boom and bust potential which will be very damaging for the microgeneration industry.

They indicate that international experience suggests that it is probably better to create a subsidy program that relates to the energy savings (whether heat or electricity).

As far as the industry is concerned the authors emphasise the importance of certainty in the market and the need to provide investor and manufacturer confidence. This lack of certainty has been the largest single factor in my own personal experience that has hindered growth in the thermal solar market, so I find my own experiences coinciding with the wisdom of the authors.

Indeed, regular readers will have seen my ideas about this expressed on many occasions in these posts.

It seems that the government’s recent announced of very large potential targets for microgeneration (seven million homes with solar water heating) and similar targets announced in the Climate Change & Sustainability Act 2008 were intended to provide confidence for investment in microgeneration. It has not yet worked.

There are various scenarios set out in the report that relate to potential take up of microgeneration. Without proper support it is likely to grow slowly. With a sensible and economic system of support we could see over 40,000 solar systems being installed next year – just under half the total solar systems in place that have been installed in the past twenty years.

As a nation we are trapped between a rock and a hard place. The rock is that of climate change, and the hard place is that of increasing scarcity of fossil fuel which makes it become growingly expensive. Microgeneration has an essential part to play, and of all the microgeneration technologies none is more highly developed, more mature or cheaper to install than solar thermal.

Professor Chesshire and his colleagues have drawn a road map that shows the way to fewer emissions and more energy security and independence. It remains to be seen whether any Government can have the courage and the long term commitment to follow John Chesshire’s road map.