Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/754587
UTILITY WEEK | 25TH NOVEMBER - 1ST DECEMBER 2016 | 5 Researchers from Sheffield University are helping a remote village in India access electricity for the first time, using anaerobic digestion. The sustainable system uses food and plant waste and solar technology to produce biogas for street and communal lighting and power to a medical centre and school. The biogas system comes as the World Biogas Association was launched at COP22 last week. "SSE thinks the public are fools" Co-founder of The Big Deal, Will Hodson, condemns SSE's price freeze, claiming the company's standard tariff is one of the most expensive in the country. "We just want a chance to compete" Renewable UK told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee that windfarms want a route to market – not subsidies. £1.7bn Investment in energy efficiency added £1.7 billion to the UK's productivity per unit of power over the past five years, according to a report by the Association for Decentralised Energy. 97% In a report, independent energy supplier Ecotricity claims that by 2035 almost all homes in Britain could be heated by green gas from grass. 100+ Foreign secretary Boris Johnson has put pen to paper and officially ratified the Paris Agreement on behalf of the UK, joining more than 100 nations that have already done so. Committee on Fuel Poverty chair The Committee on Fuel Poverty has appointed David Blakemore as its new chair. He has been a member of the organisation since its inception in January 2016 and will take up the position later this month. Blakemore has had a number of leading managerial and operational roles in multinational oil companies. Earlier this year, the committee said there were "significant short- falls" in the funding to tackle fuel poverty in the UK. APPOINTMENT Carbon monoxide is a killer Monday 21 November to Sunday 27 November is Carbon Monoxide Awareness Week, and Northern Gas Networks has made an infographic highlighting the issue. Every year in the UK more than 200 people go to hospital with suspected carbon monoxide poison- ing, and there are around 50 deaths, according to the NHS website. NGN said it had responded to 83,445 gas escapes between April 2015 and March 2016. It has also given 3,900 CO safety briefings to customers.