The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will have a positive impact on the market for CHP in buildings, when it comes into effect next April, a message reinforced at the Heat & Energy 09 conference.
The impact of the compulsory carbon cap and trading scheme was one of the messages delivered by speakers at the Heat & Energy 09 conference attended by a large audience of government departments and public sector specifiers.

Delegates were also urged to take advantage of interest-free loans now available to support investment in low carbon technologies with CHP (Combined Heat and Power) identified as a particularly important retrofit solution.

The conference, which was chaired by William Jordan, chief sustainability officer for the Office of Government Commerce, also debated standardised contracts and framework agreements to simplify efforts to green public sector buildings.

'CHP is treated very favourably under the CRC,' said speaker Ian Manders of the CHP Association. 'It is perfect for hard-to-treat buildings. Once you have done all the easy stuff – insulation, changing light bulbs and getting people to switch things off – it is very hard to get more savings from older buildings without CHP.

'It is a proven technology, there is an established industry to back it up and it can be retrofitted to existing heating systems easily...giving you control over your energy costs while also immediately cutting carbon emissions by at least 10%.'

Manders used the low energy refurbishment of 18 London fire stations featuring Dachs mini-CHP systems supplied by Baxi-SenerTec UK as an example of how CHP is being used to reduce the carbon footprint of public sector buildings. In just four months, the Dachs CHP unit installed in the station at Battersea generated 4,100 kW of electricity.

Battersea, which registers the energy produced and carbon saved by the CHP system in real time on a prominently displayed digital panel, has reported a £2,500 annual saving on fuel costs. This means the payback on the purchase cost of the CHP system will be less than six years.

Hospitals are also increasingly adopting CHP, the conference heard, with one in Birmingham reporting annual running cost savings of £650,000 for heating and cooling after replacing its old coal-fired boilers with a tri-generation system powered by a CHP engine.

Government departments were encouraged to take advantage of loans provided by the finance firm Salix, which has been set up to help public sector organisations invest in energy efficiency.

Salix has created a model which shows how £45,000 spent on CHP plant would lead to carbon savings of 120 tonnes, annual energy savings of £20,000 so giving a payback of just over two years.

'We have to start thinking completely differently about how we use energy,' said Richard Scott, E.ON's head of marketing development, who also called for increased adoption of CHP among a mix of technologies required to plug the country's growing energy gap.

'Unless we reduce consumption and get more of our energy from decentralised sources...our lights will start going out in 2016.'