Philip Wolfe outlines the REA’s scenario for meeting the 2020 targets and discuss the various options available, while suggesting the best way forward for UK

New opportunities in centralised energy generation

There are still several opportunities for large scale power and heat, which are not fully exploited by the present policies. Because of our historical focus on electricity, heat applications have been neglected – even heat used to drive electricity generation. This means that power stations typically waste perhaps 65% of their energy as heat. Such inefficiency is unacceptable in an energy constrained world, so there is a case for obliging new thermal power stations to be located where the heat can be captured and used through combined heat and power (CHP). The Biomass Task Force concluded that 7% of the UK’s heat energy could come from biomass. The government should now bring forward effective policy measures to turn this into reality. I would project that about 40% could be in the form of larger scale heat and CHP projects.

Read More