The airline industry is taking its first steps towards green energy.
British Airways has announced it is investing in a factory that will convert tonnes of household rubbish into enough jet fuel for all its flights from London City airport twice over.
Some 500,000 tonnes of waste generated by Londoners will be used by the UK facility each year to produce 16 million gallons of fuel.
Construction of the plant in east London will start within two years. It is set to produce fuel from 2014, creating up to 1,200 jobs.
BA said the plant would produce twice the amount of fuel needed to power all its flights from London City Airport.
It will be the first plant in Europe to produce jet fuel from waste matter.
It is estimated that the overall equivalent CO2 reduction as a result of the plant producing sustainable energy and fuel is approximately 550,000 tonnes per year.
The plant will be built by the US company Solena Group, with BA committing to buy all of its output.
The waste wil be fed into a high temperature “gasifier” to produce BioSynGas.
A chemical process called Fischer Tropsch is then used to convert the gas into biofuel.
Waste products from the process can be used to power the plant as well as supply 20MW of electricity to the national grid.
A solid waste product can be used as an aggregate in construction.
BA argues the plant will cut the amount of waste that is sent to landfill, reducing the amount of methane that is produced. Methane is thought to be a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Australia:
Small wind-energy companies fear privatisations of power stations and retailers in New South Wales and Queensland could weaken competition in the electricity market, hindering their capacity to contribute to the federal government’s 20 per cent renewable energy target.
Under the renewable energy target, retailers are required to buy or create enough renewable energy certificates (RECs), each representing one megawatt-hour of emissions-free electricity, to meet an annual target.
But because they are generators as well as retailers, AGL Energy and Origin Energy have tended to get the certificates through wind farms they have built themselves, according to The Australian Financial Review.
As a result, independent wind power companies such as Infigen Energy, Pacific Hydro and Canberra-based Windlab, can have difficulty locking in long-term supply contracts for the certificates they produce. Without a long-term contract, banks will not provide finance for a wind project.
“The reality is you need competition in the market place at a retailer level,” Windlab chairman Roger Price said. “I’d rather see four or five major retailers that are looking to purchase RECs rather than just two which are extremely vertically integrated.”.
UK: From today British home owners can earn money for the electricity solar PV produces under the feed-in tariff (also known as ‘clean energy cash-back’).
The feed-in tariffs have been a long time coming but they have already increased demand and you can earn up to 8% return on investment.
The tax free, index linked payments work on two levels:
- Generation tariff – depending on the size of panels, you are paid per kilowatt hour (kWh) of metered energy that panels generate, regardless of whether you use that energy or sell it to the grid. A typical solar system of less than 4 kWp will produce 41.3p per kWh.
- Export tariff – whatever size panels you have, you can choose to receive either 3p per kWh of electricity or sell it on the open market.
Depending on your energy usage you may need to draw extra electricity from the grid, but the EST say a 2.5 kWp system could produce half a home’s heating needs. Ed Miliband, Energy and Climate Secretary says: “The guarantee of getting an income on top of saving on energy bills will be an incentive to those wanting to make the move to low carbon living. ”
UK: Families can earn £900 a year by installing solar panels on their roofs as part of a new Government scheme to pay people to generate their own electricity.
Under the deal, which will start from April this year, households will be paid for electricity fed into the grid from renewable technologies such as solar, wind or energy from waste.
The most attractive rate of return will be on solar panels, which for an average sized three bedroom home could earn households £25,000 over 25 years.
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, expects one in 10 homes will have installed renewable power on their homes in the next decade expects with the number of homes with solar panels alone rising from 10,000 today to 700,000 by 2020.
He pointed out that the payments would be tax-free and a return of up to 9 per cent annually was better than any bank could provide.
However campaigners said the scheme, that will add around £11 on the average household bill by 2020 as electricity companies recoup the costs from everyone, is just another “green tax”.
The deal, called feed-in tariffs, will ensure that any households or building that invest in installing renewable electricity, should be paid a good rate of return. People who currently have solar panels must do a deal with their electricity company. The panels cannot provide a home’s entire energy needs as they only work in daylight and the energy they generate cannot be stored. When they are generating electricity, any surplus goes straight into the national grid.
“The guarantee of getting an income on top of saving on energy bills will be an incentive to householders and communities wanting to make the move to low carbon living,” said Miliband.
“The feed-in tariff will change the way householders and communities think about their future energy needs, making the payback for investment far shorter than in the past.
“It will also change the outlook for a range of industries, in particular those in the business of producing and installing small scale low carbon technology.”
Solar panels get the best rate of return under the feed-in tariff, followed by wind turbines and hydroelectric.
Installing solar panels, which cover a space of around 10ft x 10ft on an average sized roof, will cost around £12,500 but this will be paid back in10 years because the households will be paid £900 per annum, plus making £140 savings on the yearly electricity bill.
Mr Miliband also introduced a renewable heat incentive that will pay households for producing their own heat from woodchip boilers or an air source heat pump. A ground source heat pump, that costs more than £1,000 to put in, could be rewarded with £1,000 a year and lead to savings of £200 per year if used instead of oil.
John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, welcomed the scheme but said rates are still too low for communities to invest in expensive long term schemes like hydro electric on rivers or larger turbines.
“For many families, generating their own clean electricity will be an attractive investment,” he said. “However, the level of ambition set by the government’s Feed-in Tariff is still far too low if we are to reach the full potential of small scale renewables.”
Landowners and farmers are angry that the Government has set the rate for energy generated from waste or anaerobic digestion, that could be installed on many farms, so low.
