The organisers of this conference have brought together a fantastic group of speakers and the conference offers an opportunity to find out more about this evolving industry and network with others with similar interests. You can download the full conference prpgrame, and booking details here Wood Fuel Conference Invitation

The Surrey Hills Woodfair offers an opportunity to catch up with a range of businesses involved in the industry and learn more about the opportunities – as well as offering a great day out for the family in the Surrey Hills. More details are here

We have made improvements to the competition’s design in line with what Landlords have told us. These include lengthening the application window to nine weeks and relaxing the requirement to provide energy bill information until the delivery phase. We were delighted with the competitive bids submitted during Phase Two and we now want to encourage landlords to be more ambitious in their deployment plans.

We have received feedback that low scores on the scheme’s self-scoring matrix may have discouraged some landlords from proceeding with their applications in Phase Two. Landlords should be aware that ALL bids submitted in the original competition were approved and they can now consider being more ambitious in their proposals. However, if the competition is oversubscribed, monies will be allocated on the basis of the results of the scoring matrix [found at the below link] with the highest bids receiving funding.

More information can be found at the EST website

With more than 600 participants every year, the European Pellet Conferences in Wels have become the largest annual pellet event in the world!

On the conference website www.pellets.wsed.at the first announcement is available now! Check the video from the 2012 conference at www.wsed.at/video2012 & the pictures at www.wsed.at/pictures2012.

The European Pellet Conference 2013 will offer:
• high-level presentations on the latest policy and technology trends, potentials, markets, innovation, sustainability, etc.
• the World Pellet Business & Technology Forum: a market place for product and service innovation, business models and finance
• the Pellet Networking Platform: a platform for starting new co-operations among pellet actors across the value chain
• Pellet News Worldwide: updates and outlook on different European and global pellet markets
• technical site-visits on pellets and wood chips (fuel, equipment, exemplary installations)
• WSEDnext Biomass – an event for young researchers on biomass
• the Energiesparmesse – a “pellet trade show”: leading trade show on renewable energy and energy efficiency with annually 100,000 visitors and more than 100 pellet-related exhibitors
• the meeting place for the global pellet business and research community

The conference will be organised in the framework of the annual “World Sustainable Energy Days” conference by the O.O. Energiesparverband, the energy agency of Upper Austria. Upper Austria is an ideal location for such a conference: more than 25 % of all biomass boilers sold in the EU are manufactured by Upper Austria’s boiler industry, and pellet heating systems have become a standard solution.

Get involved: Call for Papers & Projects & Speakers – deadline 8 October 2012
Take the opportunity and share your work, achievements and insights with the worldwide pellet and biomass community! Send us your paper or your project (online form) or propose a speaker (online form).
Deadline for submissions is 8 October 2012. Further information on the Call for Papers & Projects & Speakers is available at the conference website: www.wsed.at/call

Practical information
Simultaneous interpretation into English, German, Russian and Spanish will be provided.
The conference fees are 270 Euro for the Pellet Conference with the site-visit (26 – 28 February), 185 Euro for the Pellet Conference (27 – 28 February), plus 10 % VAT. The fee also includes an entrance ticket to the tradeshow. Further information on fees for the different events and for students at www.wsed.at/en/registration-info.
On the conference website www.wsed.at – which will be regularly up-dated in the coming months – an online registration form is available.
We also advise you to make your hotel reservation as soon as possible – further information is available on the conference website: www.wsed.at/en/travel-accommodation

The World Sustainable Energy Days 2013
In addition to the Pellet Conference, the World Sustainable Energy Days 2013 will offer a number of other high-profile events, including the “European Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Conference”, the “Energy Efficiency Watch” Conference , the Conference “LED – innovative lighting solutions”, a poster presentation and technical site-visits. Since 20 years, experts and decision makers from all over the world flock to Upper Austria to attend the events – in the last years, the conference attracted more than 10,000 participants from over 100 countries!

The conference office is at your disposal for any further questions (conference office: T: +43-732-7720-14386, office@esv.or.at).

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the WORLD SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DAYS 2013!

Best regards
Christiane Egger
Conference Director
————————————-
O.Oe. Energiesparverband
Landstrasse 45, A-4020 Linz
T: +43 732 7720 14386
F: +43 732 7720 14383
E: office@esv.or.at
I: www.esv-en.at, www.oec-en.at
UID ATU 39283707; ZVR 171568947
Organiser of the WORLD SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DAYS – www.wsed.at

Dates: 17^th – 20^th September

Location: EaRTH, Bicton College

Price: £320+VAT

This is a pilot course to launch the new EaRTH Centre. Full detials, including how to book, are here:

4 Day BPEC Woody Biomass Heating Systems Course

The FOREST programme is committed to supporting businesses across Europe to build capacity and partnerships. The project partners do this by developing key tools in the form of technical guides, online training and market analysis reports and sharing them with businesses across the regions.

As part of this process, the UK FOREST partners held the first of two free dissemination events at the Bicton EaRTH centre, near Exeter in Devon on the 15^th June 2012, with the second planned for September 2012, in Bristol.

Event

The free, one–day event provides several in-depth presentations on the tools and guides developed by the FOREST programme, use of the FOREST website for information, online training tool and community/partner/supplier search, as well as additional material from eminent individuals from the woodfuel supply chain. In addition, the format of the day will include ample time for networking and a visit to a boiler installation.
Participation

To register your interest in attending the event, please e-mail:

tcrook@regensw.co.uk or sgreen@regensw.co.uk

The documents released also contain proposals on a number of other key components of the RHI including:

• ensuring sustainable biomass fuel supply,
• compliance with air quality standards,
• proposals examining simplification of metering arrangements
• numerous other amendments to the guidelines regarding: boiler sizing, the administration of the scheme, eligible heat use clarification

The consultation period runs until 14 September 2012. September 2012 is also when it is planned to release a further consultation outlining:

• bringing additional technologies into the non-domestic RHI
• the eagerly waited proposals for the domestic RHI

It is important to note that other than those concerning sustainability (see below), all of the amendments outlined in today’s consultation documents are ‘grandfathered’, i.e. will only affect applications accredited after the changes come into force.

You can read all the consultation documents released today here

Degression policy

DECC has proposed that there will be degressions applied to RHI tariffs if projected installation deployment levels are exceeded. Specifically, DECC has sugegsted that there will be individual tariff triggers and an overall RHI budget trigger. The intention is to have automatic degressions in RHI tariff if certain trigger deployment levels are hit. Both the trigger levels and the degression amounts will be pre-published so that industry will know exactly what the tariff reductions will be. The consultation document proposes 5% reduction for individual tariffs if their trigger level is hit. Should the market fail to respond to this small degression (i.e. continued deployment at a rate exceeding projections) a larger degression of 20% is being considered as a method of controlling deployment.

It is important to note that the DECC proposals state that should a correct application for a commissioned installation be submitted to ofgem just prior to a degression, the applicant should still recieve the higher tariff.

Tariff levels will not have the ability to be increased under the proposed degression policy, even if deployment levels are lower than projected.

It is proposed to have a review of the tariff levels (outside of any degression impacts) in 2014 and 2017.

Broader preliminary accreditation

DECC is considering rolling out the preliminary accreditation function of the current RHI to a wider range of eligible installations, with a view that this can increase confidence in achieving a particular tariff and help more projects obtain finance. The consultation document suggest that for biomass, preliminary accreditation could be available for installations of 200kW or above: valid for 12 months in a retrofit scenario, 18 months for new build.

Sustainability Criteria

DECC proposes to introduce sustainability criteria which is closely aligned to that currently in force with the Renewables Obligation (RO). For larger scale biomass installations, (greater than 1MWth) this is likely to take the form of a report which evidences that the supply of biomass has been from legal and sustainable sources, and assess the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for that particular fuel (cultivation, harvesting, processing, transportation etc).

Smaller scale and community scale instillations, it is proposed, are not expected to have to produce a report evidencing compliance with the sustainability criteria. However the government is proposing that applicants to the RHI with smaller installations must either:

• Declare annually that they are using only approved fuels
• purchase biomass from an approved supplier list
• keep receipts as proof

This criteria is proposed to become necessary to applicants receiving RHI support from April 2014.

One important exception from the arrangement described above is ‘own estate supply’. For biomass installations, DECC is proposing that if the woodfuel is sourced from the same estate as the boiler, the project can be deemed as having satisfied the sustainability criteria. It is important to note that DECC is likely to allow Ofgem the power to withold RHI payments if the sustainability criteria is not satisfactorily met.

Air Quality

The limits on emissions from biomass installations as published year are proposed to come into force for all new installations at some point between November 2012 and March 2013. The limits for boilers of a capcity less than 20MWth will be 30g/GJ (grams per gigajoule) net thermal input for particulate matter (PM) and 150g/GJ for NOx.

Metering

In the original plan for the non-domestic RHI, it was expected that most instllations would fall into the ‘simple’ metering category. This has not proved to be the case, and DECC is now proposing five improvements to the regualtions which may help reduce some of the metering burden on particular installations.

Briefly, DECC’s suggestions are:

Where it is unduly burdensome of financially non-viable to install a meter, heat loss calculations may be substituted in certain situations

1. For the majority of RHI applications, where heat loss through external piping is expected to be low, where said pipework is insulated to British standard 5422 the heat loss for RHI purposes can be said to be zero
2. In ‘complex’ systems, it is proposed that the requirement to meter both heat generated and used is removed and instead only a requirement to meter those measurements which affect RHI payments
3. Any existing renewable heat generation equipment attached to the system will not need to be metered and deducted from the calculation, provided it generates less than 5% of the heat demand is less than 5kWth
4. For ineligble fossil fuel heat sources a reasonable proxy measurement may be used instead of metering. This method would assume 100% efficient fossil fuel generation however.

In addition to the items listed above, the consultation looks at nine other changes to the current regulations, including changes to the definition of ‘installation’ and potentially allowing some process heating to take place outside  a building. There are also significant changes to  biomethane production regulations.

We will be updating our web pages shortly to comprehensively highlight the proposals indicated in today’s publications. Well done for reading this far.

Regen SW will be holding a members event (and open to paying non-members), ‘The Future of the RHI‘ on the 19th September, at Stephen Scowns Solicitors offices in Exeter, which will offer an excellent opportunity to discuss these changes in detail.   For more details, contact us