Nottingham Friends of the Earth > Archives > 2010-2011

City Council launches Energy Strategy (Jun 2010)

In June 2010, Nottingham City Council adopted an Energy Strategy aiming at reducing carbon emissions in the city as a whole by 26% by 2020. Nottingham Friends of the Earth welcomed the strategy but urged the Council to increase their target to 40%.

We particularly welcome the Council's target to reduce its own carbon emissions by 45% by 2020, and support the emphasis on improving energy efficiency in homes and businesses and reducing emissions from transport. This should create jobs and save money while looking after the environment.

On generation of low carbon energy, we strongly support most of the Strategy’s proposals including anaerobic digestion of food waste, solar thermal panels, solar PV, heat pumps, hydropower, wind turbines, and working with community groups.

Our main criticism is the inappropriate emphasis the Council has put on energy from the Eastcroft incinerator - which is very inefficient as well as burning waste which would save more energy by recycling. Less than half of the energy in the waste burnt in the incinerator is distributed as heat and electricity, and only about one third is actually sold to paying customers. (See separate page analysing this.) The incinerator emits three times as much CO2 as it saves in heat and electricity sold. So it should not be described as low carbon.

Full text of letter sent to City Council Leader Councillor Jon Collins:

We strongly support the proposal to adopt the Nottingham Energy Strategy and get on with implementing the Delivery Plan. Overall, it is asking the right questions and for the most part coming up with the right answers.

We particularly support the emphasis on

  • energy efficiency in the domestic sector
  • energy efficiency in the commercial and industrial sector
  • reducing transport emissions
  • the potential for saving money and creating jobs in implementing this strategy

We also welcome the City’s commitment to reduce your own carbon emissions by 45% by 2020. Last year we complimented the City on your Carbon Management Plan which set out a detailed Action Plan to achieve a 30% reduction by 2015. At that time we said we would like to see that extended to 40% by 2020.

We are perhaps disappointed that overall you are aiming only at the Sustainable Community Strategy target of 26% (in line with the UK’s Kyoto target of 34% reduction from 1990 to 2020), and not at a more ambitious 40% target which we have been campaigning for. However, although a number of authorities around the country have signed up to a 40% target reduction by 2020, Nottingham’s Energy Strategy does have the advantage that there is a clearly worked out Action Plan which gives some confidence that the targets can be achieved. We certainly take the view that the emphasis should be on implementing the actions set out in the Strategy rather than on quibbling about the targets. However, we would like to see the scope for strengthening the targets being considered when the Strategy is reviewed.

On generation of low carbon energy, we strongly support most of the Strategy’s proposals including anaerobic digestion of food waste, solar thermal panels, solar PV, heat pumps, hydropower, wind turbines, and working with community groups.

However, issues on which we would question some aspects of the Strategy are:

(1) Gas CHP should not be described as ‘low carbon’

We can accept that the industrial CHP plants in Nottingham are probably highly efficient. However the comments on CHP in the Strategy do not seem to be fully informed by the evidence put forward by the government’s energy adviser David MacKay in his book ‘Sustainable Energy: without the hot air’ (Chapter 21, pp144-150 – which can be viewed at www.withouthotair.com ). He demonstrates that gas CHP is unlikely to be more efficient in practice than generating the electricity in gas power stations and producing heat separately where it is needed by gas. Gas CHP district heating systems will almost certainly be less efficient and produce more carbon than burning gas for electricity and heat separately because of lack of flexibility of such systems.

(2) Incineration is not the best way of recovering ‘energy from waste’

Evidence in the Draft Waste Strategy shows that far more carbon emissions are avoided through recycling than through burning waste. So the first point is that a truly carbon-based Energy Strategy would not burn any waste that can be recycled.

Secondly, the Energy Strategy fails to recognise that the Eastcroft/EnviroEnergy CHP system is very inefficient. The incinerator burns upto 160,000 tonnes waste p.a. with a calorific value around 406GWh (WRG’s figure for 2007). Using figures given on page 12 of the Energy Strategy of 56GWh electricity generated and 127GWh heat distributed would suggest that only 14% of energy in the waste is converted to electricity and 31% to heat. Taking account of electricity and heat used in the incinerator and heat losses in distribution, in 2007 only 11% of the original energy was sold as electricity and 22% sold as heat.

Thirdly, there appears to be an assumption that around two thirds of waste incinerated will be from renewable sources. While this may be true for municipal waste as a whole, if most green waste, food and paper/card is taken out for recycling then it has been predicted that by 2020 perhaps only one third of residual waste will be ‘renewable’.

Fourthly, the incinerator should not be described as ‘low carbon’. Assuming a carbon content in waste in the range 24% to 27%, annual emissions will be in the range 140,000 to 160,000 tonnes CO2, of which nearly 100,000 tonnes could be from fossil carbon in 2020. The electricity sold will displace less than 25,000 tonnes CO2 from generation of grid electricity, and the heat sold will displace less than 20,000 tonnes CO2 assuming it displaces gas heating. The only way the incinerator saves carbon emissions overall is by avoided landfill emissions.

(3) Biomass CHP

If you are going to propose a new CHP district heating system we would expect you to:

  • address the issues raised by David MacKay;
  • ensure that the system is a lot more efficient than the Eastcroft/EnviroEnergy system;
  • ensure production of biomass does not displace other land uses.