Abstract
The development and rapid household adoption of smallscale, low and zero carbon microgeneration technologies are key elements of UK and EU strategies to meet the challenge of climate change. Microgeneration heat technologies, including solar thermal hot water, heat pumps and biomass heating systems, have an especially important role in reducing the carbon emissions from buildings. But despite government policies to promote microgeneration, adoption by UK householders is very slow. Surveys by the Open University and Energy Saving Trust examined why over 900 UK householders decided to adopt these technologies and why many do not. These surveys describe the niche market for microgeneration heat as largely confined to environmentally concerned, older, middleclass householders, mainly living in larger properties off the mains gas network. Although these pioneer adopters are generally highly satisfied, for microgeneration heat to expand beyond its market niche, several issues need to be addressed, including: price reductions and subsidies? independent information on the suitability, performance, payback and effective use of equipment? ‘one- stop’ support from consideration to operation? improved system compatibility with smaller properties and existing buildings and heating systems? and more userfriendly and informative controls.
Highlights
A second survey was conducted via email and weblink with 546 UK householders who were randomly selected from the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) database as a representative sample of householders who had been awarded a government grant to install a microgeneration system
The findings show that most of the 546 adopters had already installed energy efficiency measures before applying for a LCBP grant to help pay for the system, the grant stimulated up to a quarter of adopters to install extra insulation, new energy-saving lights and/or heating controls
The Open University (OU)/Energy Saving Trust (EST) surveys show that microgeneration space and water heating systems currently mainly attracts ‘pioneers’ interested in innovative green technologies and able to pay the upfront installation costs, who are driven by a desire to reduce their carbon emissions coupled with the hope to save money and enjoy the pleasure of using low or zero carbon energy
Summary
A number of recent reports on the potential of local or distributed energy stressed the importance of microgeneration heat technologies – the smallscale production of heat from a low carbon source–to achieve the UK’s renewables and carbon emission reduction targets [4,5]. The government’s microgeneration strategy suggested that widespread adoption of solar thermal hot water (STHW) systems, heat pumps, biomass stoves and boilers, and microCHP technologies, could reduce domestic carbon emissions by up to 6.5% by 2030 and up to 15% by 2050 [6]. Microgeneration heat could play a small but significant contribution to meeting the challenges of the 2008 Climate Change Act, in which the UK government set demanding targets to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050 on 1990 levels [7]
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