Three-year scheme will encourage small-scale, local energy generation.
A £30m funding package to reduce carbon emissions and promote ‘microgeneration’ technologies – such as microturbines, solar panels and air source heat pumps – has been announced by energy minister Malcolm Wicks. He outlined plans for the Low Carbon Building Programme at the launch of the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College, London.
As part of the scheme, local communities and businesses will be able to apply for grants to build microtechnologies to generate sustainable power on site; for example, the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts will receive a grant for its solar panels.
Mr Wicks said that such projects were “an excellent way for individuals, communities and businesses to make their own contribution to tackling climate change”.
The LCBP will be funded over a three-year period from April 2006, and will replace the Clear Skies and Major Photovolaic Development programmes. Both outgoing schemes have been popular with schools; Mr Wicks said that the LCBP would continue to focus on education: “I am calling on all major players in the energy field to work with my department in order to expand the microgeneration sector, with a particular emphasis on renewable energy technology on school buildings. We have already aided 184 schools with their projects.”
While the announcement calmed fears that there would be a gap in funding for such projects when the Clear Skies and Major Photovoltaics schemes came to an end, some experts say that the LCBP amounts to a cut in funding overall.
Dr Jeremy Leggett, chief executive of solarcentury and a member of the government's Renewables Advisor Board, said: "There are half a dozen members of the renewable micropower family. The LCBP is supposed to enable markets for all of them, plus energy efficiency. Given that the support for all solar technologies in 2005-06 is £14m, this amounts to a dreastic cut in funding. The governement needs to wake up to the increasingly embarassing discordance between its rhetoric and the reality."
