Anthony Coumidis, sustainability and energy director at property and construction consultancy McBains Cooper says local authorities should interpret their “10% renewables” planning rules differently to drive down the cost of green energy:

____

Current planning permission regulations say new builds must generate at least 10% of their energy needs from on-site renewable energy equipment.

But in most cases moving the renewable energy generating equipment away from the building to which it is contributing power will generate even greater efficiencies.

Some new buildings simply do not offer the highest possible return on investment in energy equipment, primarily because of their location.

Wind speeds in city centres are, on average, far lower than on a coastline, so wind turbines will not run at their optimum, and low-rise buildings constructed in the shadow of bigger buildings may not benefit from efficient solar power generation.

Investing, say, £250,000 in wind turbines for a city centre building that only turn for 50% of the time is often the wrong move. It will not yield as much power for your money as an identically costed development in a place where higher and more consistent wind speeds occur 75% of the time.

To this end, if local authorities re-allocated a proportion of budget that would have been invested on renewable energy equipment in a new-build, and put it towards a central fund which bought into a much bigger and efficient wind, wave or solar power farm, they would reap significant energy cost savings for their communities.

This could be viewed as the green efficiency difference between 20 school-run cars and a school bus with its own bus lane. One has 20 build and design costs, and stops and starts – the other has one design cost, an economy-of-scale build cost and runs consistently and efficiently.

Local authorities may have to wait a while until they break even but once this has been achieved the energy is costing nothing except for the maintenance of equipment.  Also, as the price of traditional energy sources increase the project viability and payback reduces.

This “big picture” approach is pragmatic and allows local authorities to generate a non profit business that could serve their communities by allowing the authority to trade its CO2 while generating green electricity for its residents.

We live and learn. And what we’re learning is that there are potentially better and more cost-efficient ways to generate renewable or green energy, and that’s not necessarily down to technology.

• Councils lack energy network skills
• Councils to partner energy firms on green homes
• Least eco-friendly buildings to be phased out
• Scottish councils nervy over delegation rules
• RTPI conference: Green progress not enough