LAWR

March 2015 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 21 energy recovery Robert Purdon is business development manager at Enviroenergy. ECC's recent announce- ment that its success- ful Heat Network Delivery Unit is to be retained means it is now accepting a fourth round of funding bids from local authorities. The unit has so far provided funding for a total of 122 feasibility studies for 91 different authorities to determine whether heat networks could be a viable means of reducing both car- bon emissions and fuel poverty within their boundaries. There are many benefits this can bring to communities and one of which is that sustainable energy can create local jobs. Nottingham continues to invest in large-scale renewable energy projects strategically. It has done this by assessing the opportunities for renewable energy in the Nottingham area and by talking to local businesses, Nottingham is choosing technologies that will help create local markets and jobs Despite this current push from Government, the concept of district heating in Nottingham is by no means new. Nottingham City Council strate- gic director commercial and neighbour- hood services Andy Vaughan says: "The Nottingham District Heating Network has been operating in the city since 1972, and by the end of this year will be supply- ing more than 100 commercial sites and 5,000 domestic homes with heating and hot water piped from the London Road heat station. "Strategic energy projects, like district heating schemes, can act as an incentive for development because they will help developers meet new carbon reduction obligations in changes to the Building Regulations. Generating renewable ener- gy can also reduce councils' dependence on volatile energy markets. Sustainable energy options for us can lead to reduc- Nottingham's district heating scheme is unusual in that it is wholly-owned and operated by Nottingham City Council and their energy trading arm, Enviroenergy. D Nottingham goes low-carbon with district heating District heating is very much back on the agenda for councils across Britain and Nottingham is already ahead in its thinking for district heating plans. Robert Purdon reports. ing our residents' energy bills, tackle fuel poverty and create and support local markets and jobs." Low-carbon The concept is simple – instead of transporting the fuel (i.e. gas) to hun- dreds of individual buildings, so heat can be generated on-site at each one, heat supplied via a heat network is generated at one or more central plants and transported in the form of hot water directly into customers' homes and businesses. This leads to a far more efficient opera- tion and gives network operators the opportunity to offer a low-carbon, often lower-cost, alternative to gas. A heat network can consist of just two or three buildings connected together, or several thousand. Nottingham's scheme is unusual in that it is wholly-owned and operated by Nottingham City Council and their energy trading arm, Enviroenergy. Whilst a fully in-house operation may not be viable for most cities, Nottingham has been able to build on decades of expertise gained from the days when the control- ling stake in the network was held by the National Coal Board, and then the French energy giant Dalkia. The author- ity bought Dalkia out in 2001, and have been operating the scheme independently ever since. The heat for the scheme is predomi- nantly generated by waste incineration at the city's energy-from-waste plant at Eastcroft depot. This central location has proved key to developing the network, allowing Enviroenergy to connect to many large commercial heat loads in the immediate vicinity, known as 'anchor loads'. These include the Nottingham's two main shopping centres, the National Ice Centre and Capital FM Arena, Nottingham Trent University, numer- ous hotels and apartment complexes, and head office facilities for locally based organisations such as Capital One, HMRC and Ikano. Off-grid power Furthermore, the steam is also run through a 14.5MW condensing turbine, providing off-grid power for a private wire network of a dozen commercial premises. The means of generating the heat and power has allowed the city to reduce its carbon footprint significant- ly, whilst providing a cost-effective means of waste disposal. By connecting the 5,000 domestic dwellings to the network, the city has been able to partially take control of util- ity provision in one of the city's most deprived residential areas. As gas prices generally rise over time, this presents the authority with an opportunity to directly tackle the impact of fuel poverty. Nottingham's network continues to expand, with many of the new city centre developments due to connect within the next two to three years. Nottingham has launched its third generation of the 'EE Monitor'. It uses this heat pre-payment system on its own social housing stock and on schemes run by local authorities and housing associa- tions across the UK. The future is bright for the Nottingham district heating scheme, and district heating in the UK as a whole, as the Government and others begin to recog- nise the potential environmental benefits of this approach.

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