There are a couple of articles in this issue which I would like to draw to your attention.
One is the article on Feed-in-Tariffs and the other is in the FETA Magazine, which HVR publishes on behalf of the organisation, from the European Heat Pump Association which shows dramatically how the French government has driven the heat pump market with substantial subsidies.

I am still surprised about how long it has taken for the UK government to change from a policy of grants to a Feed-in-Tariff for those renewables which can be connected to the grid.

Last year I was with a party of trade journalists in Germany, staying in an hotel which had a Dachs combined heat and power machine.

What any hotel needs is lashings of hot water and what the unit offered was, well, lashings of free hot water. The CHP engine is at its most economical when it is running all day, every day, just right for an hotel or hospital or nursing home or a leisure centre and anywhere else that needs electricity and hot water 24 hours a day.

More to the point, the hotel was using a smart meter. which allowed the hotel to export spare electricity to the grid when it was not using it.

The hotel received a set amount per kW/hr exported which was around €0.11 and also received about €0.05 for the electricity it generated and used itself. And the German government has specified a date well into the future for these tariffs to continue so that it is worthwhile for companies to buy the equipment in the first place.

Another way of generating electricity is to use photo-voltaic cells.
Photo-voltaic is costly which is why there is so little of it in the UK.

Until now there has been a grant for those who install CHP or photo-voltaic but many have tried and failed to get this grant.
But from April next year this will all change to a Feed-in-Tariff system. Why has it taken so long for government to fall in line with the rest of Europe?

Probably because we have had cheap gas and government has not had to bother too much until now. I also think the ministers which have supposedly been on the side of building services have been short-lived, at best weak and sometimes foolish.
You have only to visit Germany or France to realise how worthwhile grants, easily obtained, have put renewables at top of people's mind.

There will be a Feed-in-Tariff which will be along the lines of the one used in Germany. Whether it will include a free smart meter or not I do not know. We are behind mainland Europe here too.

Perhaps this new construction tsar will help to drive the UK energy market forward to catch up with mainland Europe.
What was his name again?

Paul Braithwaite / Editor