Appendix 1
Most of the local authorities in the West Midlands have renewables and local energy opportunity maps and studies produced over the past ten years and still hold these. In many cases they hold detailed housing stock data either because they own their own stock e.g., in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Solihull, or because they have carried out HECAxcviii reporting for many years24. The South of the region including Solihull is particularly strong on supporting and targeting ECO, and has been a prime user of recent flexibilities introduced into the ECO scheme by government to allow local authorities to take greater control.
The main issue is not knowing what the project opportunities are, it is securing the local political consensus, stakeholder support and finance (within appropriate and predictable environments from the perspective of risk and returns) to make them happen.
This appendix summarises resources known to be available, including the additional Black Country Mapping report commissioned as part of this project to fill in the one major gap in the region.
Studies of relevance to this strategy are:
Heat network studies part financed by BEIS (HNDU) for:
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Canley
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Dudley
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Sandwell (in progress)
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Solihull
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South Staffordshire
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Warwick (in progress)
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Whitley (in progress)
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Several across Birmingham and Staffordshire (see Figure 22 below)
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A comprehensive utilities study for UK Central by Peter Brett Associates (in progress)
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A detailed study of Coventry’s energy requirements by Rolton Group (subject to NDA)
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GBSLEP Low Carbon Energy Plan 2016 (Gyron LLP) and associated Master planning study
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Wolverhampton Renewable Energy and Carbon Reduction Study, Amec Groupxcix
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Detailed solar feasibility study for the city of Birmingham.
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Various housing studies held by local authorities and the Sustainable Housing Action Partnership, which runs regional forums for the exchange of best practice in low carbon housing.
First principles renewables opportunity studies covering all technologies including wind, hydro, solar and biomass for Birmingham, Warwickshire and Coventry have also been completed in the past 10 years (by Encraft and EST respectively).
The Black Country as a LEP area lacked any overall ‘masterplan’-level assessment of local energy opportunities and demand. Aecom was commissioned as part of this project to deliver this.c Selected excerpts from the report are provided to give an indication of the data now available.
The report looked at:
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energy demand patterns and magnitudes across the four metropolitan boroughs;
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energy costs for residential and commercial customers;
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technical and economic opportunities for meeting these needs using:
- district energy schemes
- solarPV
- battery storage
- energy from waste;
other renewables/nuclear (although it concluded none of these were viable at any meaningful economic scale).
Detailed maps of demand were produced for each of the four boroughs in the LEP. These are held at the BCLEP in GIS form and available on request to project developers.