Utilities have called for changes to "outdated" gas and electricity levies in a bid to decrease costs of electrified heating and save the poorest households more than £100 a year. Currently, 23% of the cost of electricity is made up of environmental and social obligation costs, with the costs of numerous decarbonisation programs funded through
Any of the initial £2 billion promised for the Green Homes Grant that goes unspent this year will not be rolled over. This was confirmed by energy minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan in a parliamentary answer, with Trevelyan stating that this original funding was announced as a “short term stimulus for use in the 2020/21 financial year
The government has restated its commitment to heat pumps following the most recent Future Homes Standard consultation. It investigated changes to Part L of the standard within which there were two key options, whether to target a 20% carbon emissions reduction in homes through “very high” fabric standards, or whether to target a 31% reduction
The solar sector has welcomed the UK government’s 31% home carbon emissions reduction target as part of the long-awaited Future Homes Standard update. According to Solar Energy UK, this target could lead to a five-fold increase in new homes built with solar technologies as home builders opt for the low-carbon technology to help meet reduction
On 1 January 2020 – just over a year ago today - the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) went live. A brand spanking new incentive scheme, the SEG was intended to replace the feed-in tariff (FiT) but with one major difference: this time the rate would be set by energy suppliers, resulting in a wide spread
2020 was a record-breaking year, with wind generation, solar, and coal-free records helping to make it the greenest year ever for Great Britain’s electricity network. The record for wind generation was broken on several occasions last year, with the final record set on 18 December when wind generated 17.2GW, National Grid ESO announced in its
After years of build up, a giant battery storage project is online in Moss Landing, California, and a huge one is on the way in Florida. Just five years ago, a 20 megawatt battery storage project was considered big. Now a 300 megawatt project, the largest in the world, has gone online in California, and
Belfast and Manchester have both revealed climate change plans, with the latter targeting a 2038 net zero target. Having signed a cities pledge that outlines the actions Manchester will take to meet its environmental targets in its Race to Zero, leader of Manchester City Council Sir Richard Leese said the council was taking the climate
Driven by technological advances, facilities are being built with storage systems that can hold enough renewable energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes. The advent of “big battery” technology addresses a key challenge for green energy — the intermittency of wind and solar. The twin smokestacks of the Moss Landing Power Plant tower over
Incentivising people to use power when renewable output is surplus but demand is low helps balance out peaks and keep the grid in equilibrium Zero-carbon power outstripped fossil fuel in the UK’s electricity mix in 2020 for the first time since the industrial revolution. Back then, Thomas Edison’s Holborn Viaduct coal plant – opened in