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Carbon capture and storage developers can access data on 78 billion tonnes worth of carbon dioxide storage sites off the UK coast, using a website launched by the Crown Estate and British Geological Survey (BGS) today.

The website holds data on nearly 600 units of storage in saline aquifiers and depleted oil and gas fields around the UK.

It is named “CO2 Stored” and is intended to help industry plan projects in the UK which has one of the largest storage capacities in Europe.

Dr Ward Goldthorpe, programme manager at the Crown Estate, said the launch was a “significant step forward”. He added: “The unique partnership with the British Geological Survey provides long term stewardship of this nationally significant dataset, and we will be working to ensure industry, academia, government and other interested users can access the data as easily as possible.”

BGS director of science and technology Mike Stephenson said storage of carbon dioxide in the North Sea “could be big business in the future” and this project “will help kick-start this new industry”.

This forms part of a £1 million five-year partnership programme of the Crown Estate and the BGS, which builds on a £4 million project by the Energy Technologies Institute to identify storage sites.

CCS programme manager at the ETI, Andrew Green said “Our modelling has shown that there is huge potential and a strong argument for CCS to be a core component of the UK’s future energy mix. Whilst a lot of focus is on the build and demonstration of CCS plant, the availability of sufficient high-quality storage capacity is crucial to the large-scale rollout of CCS in the UK.
Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the CCS Association, welcomed the development. He said: “This is a tremendous resource for the CCS industry, regulators and the wider CCS community – and in particular will enable developers of CCS to choose only the best sites for carbon dioxide storage.”

Graham Meeks

Graham Meeks, Director of the Combined Heat and Power Association is to take the post of head of policy at the Green Investment Bank.

He moves 6 years after joining the company prior to that he was head of heat and fuels at Renewable Energy Association. He previously held the role of advisory director at Climate Change Capital.

The UK government created the Green Investment Bank in 2012 to attract private funds for the financing of the private sector’s investments in the environmental energy sector and is a public limited company, owned by the Department for Business Innovation and skills.

The Green Investment Bank has a mandate from Government is to deploy at least 80% of its capital in the following sectors: offshore wind; waste recycling and energy from waste; non-domestic energy efficiency and support for the government’s Green Deal.

The appointment was confirmed by a spokesperson for The Green Investment Bank.

House showing the energy efficiency measures

Energy saving improvements to your property could increase the value by 14% on average according to research by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).

Over 300,000 property sales in England were taken into account in the survey between 1995 and 2011 which showed that “energy efficiency is now a key factor influencing the sale price of most residential dwellings in England”.

For an average home in the country, increasing it’s EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) by 2 bands could mean adding more than £16,000 to the price of the property.

In the North East, improved energy efficiency from band G to E could increase the value by £25,000 and in the North West by £23,000.

Greg Barker, energy and climate change minister, said: “Not only can energy efficient improvements help protect you against rising energy prices, but they can also add real value to your property. This coalition is committed to helping hardworking families with the cost of living. The Green Deal is designed to do exactly that.

“The Green Deal is helping more people make these types of home improvements, reducing high upfront costs and letting people pay for some of the cost through the savings on their bills. The Green Deal is a great option for anyone wanting to improve the look, feel and potentially the value of their home.”

Broadcaster and co-founder of the Grand Designs Future Living home retrofit company, Kevin Mcloud said “There are some 26 million homes in Britain, most of them about as well insulated as a rabbit hutch, and they need immediate help to be made less wasteful.

“The Green Deal is now maturing into a helpful way of financing a lot of the retrofit solutions around. Homeowners can now start to make these changes, alleviate the burden of high energy bills and improve the value of their prime asset.”

Almost half of properties in England are band D, but compared to this, a typical home in the West Midlands in band B is on average nearly £17,000 more in value. In the North East this could be over £19,000 which is £3,000 more than the national average.

Ian Marchant the Chief Executive of SSE has been appointed president of the Energy Institute, a voluntary position to be held from June 2013 to summer 2015.

Marchant became the chief executive of SSE eleven years ago, being promoted from the role of finance director which was a position he held from 1998.

He has been in the energy industry since 1992 when he joined Southern Electric, which changed to SSE in 1998. Prior to this he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

He will be leaving his job at SSE at the end of the month.

He is also senior independent director at the Aberdeen-based oil and energy company John Wood Group, chairman of the Scotland 2020 Delivery Group and a member of Ofgem’s Environmental Advisory Group. He is also a member of the Energy Research Partnership.

He said “I have spent the last 21 years working in the energy industry and have grown to appreciate the skills, knowledge and experience of everyone in the sector, and the key role that energy plays in our modern life.”

Chief Executive of the Energy Institute, Louise Kingham OBE said “Ian is a well-known figurehead within the energy industry who is passionate about the role the industry plays in developing society.”

Experts say that renewable gas will be available to buy via the grid in the next two to three years.

According to the Anaerobic Digestion & Biogas Association (ADBA), there are 20-30 schemes in the pipeline to inject gas in to the grid from organic waste materials.

This will be available on the ‘green gas’ tariff in the same way that renewable electricity is available to businesses and households.

Addressing a meeting of the Major Energy Users Council recently, energy demand manager at National Grid, Marcus Stewart, hailed biomethane as ‘the most deployable solution for renewable heat’. He also said “The opportunity is significant. Look out for renewable gas: it’s coming.”

Chief executive of the ADBA Charlotte Morton said the UK could produce up to 40TWh a year worth of biogas, adding “It can be scaled up quickly and relatively cheaply.”

Anaerobic digestion is growing rapidly, but government support is needed to help other sources, she said, in particular the gasification of industrial and municipal waste.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has issued  a warning that global warming is “not on track” to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees centigrade by 2020.

Their latest World Energy report predicts that climate change could potentially double the bench mark, reaching between 3.6 degrees centigrade and 5.3 degrees centigrade.

In the report it says that ” much more can be done to tackle energy-sector emissions without jeopardising economic growth”.

Updated estimates from the IEA for global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2012 reveals a 1.4% increase, reaching a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes, but also mask significant regional differences, according to the organisation.

Executive director of IEA Maria van der Hoeven said “Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities. But the problem is not going away – quite the opposite.”

The largest growth in carbon dioxide emissions was in China with 300 million tonnes, although the increase was also one of the lowest it has seen in ten years as a result of the deployment of renewables and improvements in energy intensity. Although there is increases in the use of coal in some countries, emissions in Europe have declined by 50 million tonnes , with emissions increasing by 70 million tonnes in Japan.

In the United States, a switch from coal to gas in power generation helped reduce emissions by 200 million tonnes, bringing them back to the level of the mid 1990s.

Energy efficiency measures in industry, building and transport would account for almost half of the emissions reduction in 2020 with the additional investment required offset by reduced spending on fuel bills.

Actions were welcomed on limiting the construction and use of the least efficient coal fired power, which the IEA said would lead to 20% reduction in emissions and curb air pollution in the local area.

The IEA also said that the share of power generation from renewables should increase (from around 20% today to 27% in 2020), as should power generation from natural and that actions to halve expected methane released into the atmosphere from the upstream oil and gas industry in 2020 would provide 18% of the savings.

Implementing a partial phase out of fossil fuel consumption subsidies would account for 12% of the reduction in emissions and support the energy efforts, as stated in the report.

The owner of British Gas, Centrica has approached shale gas company Cuadrilla Resources to take a stake in its licences in Lancashire’sBowland Shale region.

Cuardilla will start the hydraulic fracture, or fracking of wells in the region next year after completing a series of environmental assessments. Centrica are the first major UK utilities company to make this move.

This follows a report earlier this month that fellow shale gas explorer IGas had underestimated had underestimated the amount of shale gas to be tapped into it’s licence area of Cheshire. There could be up to 170 trillion cubic feet of gas in the areas its licenced to explore in territories in Northern England.

Some previous estimates from IGas were set at only 9 trillion cubic feet of shale gas but due to the company setting the volume of shale gas at anything from 15.1 trillion cubic feet to 172.3 trillion feet -nearly 20 times greater than originally thought – estimates have now been boosted.

Shale Gas has proved controversial as part of the government’s energy plans, with environmentalists arguing the possibility of earth tremors due to the exploration of the energy source.

The annual has consumption in the UK is estimated to be three million cubic feet.

Cuadrilla Resources declined to comment about any approach from Centrica.

Ed Davey, Energy Secretary defended the Energy Bill saying that it would give certainty to investors.

In a letter to The Independent, Davey said “The Energy Bill WILL make the UK’s electricity supply green”although the government haven’t committed to setting a decarbonisation target in 2014.

He also said that it would make sense to set a decarbonisation target in 2016, after the fifth carbon budget has been set and added “In any case, we’re already bound by law to cut emissions across the whole UK economy by 50 per cent by 2025, and the Energy Bill will bring about substantial decarbonisation of the power sector as part of that.”

Davey said that the strong cross-party consensus behind the bill should give investors ” huge confidence” which hits back at critics who said that not setting a decarbonisation target until 2016 won’t give the investors any certainty.

This comes after the voting down of an amendment tabled by the Energy and Climate Change Committee chair Tim Yeo and Labour’s Barry Gardiner to push for a decarbonisation target to be set by 1st April 2014, by 290 votes to 267.

According to research by Consumer Futures, households heated by electricity will be the hardest hit by the government’s energy policy.

There are 11% of homes heated by electricity, three quarters of which will get no help with their bills and have an average bill rise of £282 in 2020.

Consumer Futures has called for energy efficiency measures to target the over 65′s and those in purpose built flats, which amounts to around 1.7 million homes.

“Energy policies should provide benefits to many consumers” said Adam Scorer director of policy at the watchdog, ” but as they are rolled out they will also create clear winners and losers. Some of those losers will be hit hard, and will not be in a position to absorb some significant bill shocks.”

The research suggests that The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) have overplayed the positive impact the policies will have on prices.

The average household will be £31 better off if EU energy efficiency standards for appliances deliver the savings expected by government.The Decc have a figure of £166, but that is taking into account policies that were introduced in 2002.

If the products don’t have the desired effect, Consumer Futures said that bills could increase by £93 compared to no policy.

Scorer said: “There is a real danger that heroic assumptions about the benefits of product policy could perform the function of an energy policy comfort blanket, providing an illusory sense of security and cost saving. Consumers cannot afford such over-generous policy assumptions.”

An attempt by rebels to push through a 2030 decarbonisation target amendment as part of the Energy Bill has failed today.The amendment was voted down by 290 votes to 267 this afternoon.

Some high profile rebels including former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy and president Tim Farron voted for the amendment, but this was not enough to pass it.

Tim Yeo, the Conservative chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, tabled the amendment alongside Labour’s Barry Gardiner to attempt to achieve a decarbonisation target by 1 April 2014.

Under the Energy Bill as it stands, the secretary of state will be able to set a decarbonisation target for 2030 no earlier than 2016, once the fifth carbon budget has been agreed.

Yeo told the commons the amendment would have “materially improved the Energy Bill”. He disputed fears that setting the decarbonisation target in 2014 would increase energy bills.

The front bench of Labour looked confident as they left for the lobby to vote on the amendment, but when they returned they may have suspected they didn’t have enough support as energy secretary Davey shared a joke with former energy minister John Hayes.

There was some disappointment from the Labour MP’s as the government had tried to rush the bill through, with less than half an hour was allowed for additional debate.

REA Chief Executive Gaynor Hartnell said the failure to get the amendment added was “disappointing”.

She added: “Failing to decarbonise our electricity supply industry will have long term consequences both environmentally and economically.”