Creative destruction - Market projections in the Renewables market

The (Labour) government has and has further planned interventions in the renewables markets. They expect individuals to purchase renewables for their electricity production and heating. Their reason for doing this is very clear:

They have targets to meet 20-20-20 20% reduction in carbon by 2020.

Of the UK carbon emissions 43% is through our heating. Whilst you can insulate and build energy efficient buildings, you wont reach the target without targeting heating.

RegenSW believe that the scale of the domestic opportunity in the South West is 300,000 installations in the years up to 2020, including 26000 biomass installations.

Nationally (DECC) the scale of installations is 1,500,000 including 300,000 biomass.

Of interest is the critical nature of the need - ie  giga Watts of energy.

At the moment there are an expected 786,000 solar PV installations expected nationally. These only produce 1646 gW of energy in the form of electricity. This is 2000 kW per install per annum

The 300,000 biomass installations are expected to produce 5500 gW of energy or 18394 kW per annum

Airsource Heat Pumps 9502 kW per install per annum
Grounds source heat pumps 8823 kW per install per annum

Of the overall energy generated - 11652 gW nearly 50% is through biomass.

There are some issues

• The Renewable Heat Incentive is already late, and may not be in place by 2011.
• The MCS scheme (installers and boiler manufactures have to "pass" and be accredited) was late, is expensive, and has not delivered enough manufacturers onto the market as yet. This leaves consumers with a small choice.
• Existing legislation affects building control allowing wood pellets or in its most efficient form. "Wood", is still considered to be one fuel type and one boiler type. It is therefore not considered to be smokeless and the flues have to be 4.5m high. 

Added to which there is a general election. The Conservative manifesto does not mention biomass at all in its documents. Certainly not at a domestic level. They do not like the MCS scheme.

This puts the confidence in the industry at a low point ahead of the election. 

As an observation it is strange how the part of the equation that is critical to the sums working ie biomass installations have been the parts of the strategy that have been late. Even the MCS training was not available until late.