The UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey says there is a big case for significant investment to be made in decentralised energy as a means of boosting the country’s energy efficiency.
Mr Davey was speaking to COSPP at the launch of a report by the newly re-branded Association for Decentralised Energy (formerly CHPA), entitled, ‘Invisible Energy: Hidden Benefits of the Demand Side”, which highlighted the achievements demand side investments have made in delivering more economic growth for less energy.
Davey also indicated there has been a blind spot in how government goes about energy efficiency projects, which explains why Westminster has been slow in moving on the potential of decentralised energy.
“I think sometimes Whitehall and Westminster can look at the big decentralized projects, and they look the easiest to do because you are dealing with fewer people. From the centre it often looks like the most efficient thing to do but in fact it often isn’t.”
“I think you can make a big case on efficiency grounds for massive investment in decentralized energy. I think it is going to come from both a community energy basis, with local communities wanting to have more control of the electricity and heat that they use but also of course from industry which can reap huge benefits through cutting carbon emissions and become more competitive. So there’s a real opportunity there and I want to make sure the work we’ve done to begin the revolution continues.”
Asked how he saw the role of decentralized energy sources such as combined heat and power as a suitable balancer for the variability of renewables (as is the case in Denmark), the secretary of state said: “In our heat strategy published in 2013 we looked at this very seriously and one of the things I am most proud of is the heat network delivery unit which has supported a large number of feasibility studies, which are looking into the deployment of heat networks, which could of course be combined with combined heat and power and could lead to such benefits (as you mentioned).”
Earlier Dr Tim Rotheray, Director of ADE told attendees at the launch of the report, that analysis found that the industrial sector is now able to produce twice as much as it did in 1980 with the same amount of energy.
He added that if the country used as much energy in industrial and services sector as it had done in 1980, business and public sector consumers would be spending an additional £37.2bn on their energy every year
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