Co-firing and the renewables obligation

Carbon capture and storage is interesting, yes, but the co-firing of biomass is what particularly interests me, what get's me out of bed in the morning.

So when I stumbled across the government's response to the latest consultation regarding banding of the renewables obligation I thought that I would give it a read.

It contains confirmation of what I thought I knew, which is nice.

The Renewables Obligation (RO) requires electrical supply companies to sell to their customers (that's you, me, and our employers) a minimum percentage of "renewable" electricity. Handily the RO tells you how you can do this with a big long list. I won't bore you, but it contains all you'd expect - wind, wave, solar, geothermal and of course co-firing of biomass.

Now originally co-firing of biomass (with either coal or gas) was due to be written out of the renewables obligation from 2016. Madness. This has now changed so that it will be supported, possibly until 2037 (although with so many recent policy changes it may not last all that time).

There was also a cap put on the system - so that co-firing could not be used by a supplier for more than 10% of their obligation - meaning they had to invest in wind and wave for the remaining 90%.
This makes sense, it stabilises the RO.
This cap has been raised to 12.5% of the suppliers obligation - so whilst wind, wave (etc.) can be used to make up 100% of the suppliers obligation (if the suppliers wish it), wind and wave have to make up at least 87.5% of the electrical mix.

This has all now changed.

The government has realised that different technologies cost different amounts of money (offshore wind is more expensive than onshore wind!). From the spring (or whenever parliament enacts the legislation) different technologies will receive different levels of support.
The co-firing of regular biomass (agricultural waste) will be halved in value - so twice as much will have to be burnt for the same level of support.
Burning energy crops in dedicated plants (so not with coal or gas) will be worth twice as much - so half the electricity can be generated in this manner for the same level of support.

This is why so many new dedicated biomass plants have recently been announced.

On the whole this will reduce the support paid to coal fired power stations - or encourage them to burn more and more biomass.

Time will tell.

Feed in tarriff's

Whilst I've been away a lot of interesting things have been happening - mainly centered around the creation of DECC (although that website still needs a bit of work!).

Included within the changes being proposed is the inclusion of feed in tarriffs. Here electricity suppliers are told that, for every MWh of electricity they generate, they will receive a fixed subsidy (in addition to the revenue they receive from the generated electricity).
The current scheme is more complicated and as such cannot give a clear price as to the level of subsidy which it will provide.

Generally I think that feed in tarriffs are seen as more efficient (at getting renewables created) than ROCs. They may also be cheaper.

So far the statement by Miliband on an amendment to include feed in tarriffs requires that such tarriffs will only apply to the smallest (probably domestic) generators.

Extending this concept, sweeping the renewables obligation away and replacing it with a system of feed in tarriffs may be a good idea, increasing the rate at which renewables are deployed in the country, but it may destroy any investor confidence which still exists.