The government, together with Ofgem, has launched a study into the incentives and barriers for decentralised energy generation.

The move follows the recent Energy Review, which outlined how a move away from centralised power production to community-based locally grown energy could help cut carbon emissions.

The aim of the Distributed Energy Generation document is to gather industry views. The hope is this will help establish what barriers may exist to prevent the further growth of distributed generation.

“There is huge potential for us to make energy a local issue, involving individuals, businesses and communities,” says trade and industry secretary Alastair Darling. “We want to understand the barriers to generating energy locally in large buildings like hospitals, hotels and universities.”

The document can be downloaded from the DTI website at www.dti.gov.uk/energy/review/page31995.html

The DTI and Ofgem have also launched a consultation into the licensing regime for transporting electricity from offshore windfarms to the mainland.

The consultation explores two options. One is a non-exclusive system that would enable competition between many licensed transmission owners to provide offshore grid connections, and the other an exclusive system in which a number of transmission owners in different areas would be licensed to provide offshore grid connections.

A copy of the consultation document can be downloaded at www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem/index.jsp

Source

Building Sustainable Design