Spending cuts threaten green power schemes

This week the first set of builders moved in to start work on a community hydro-electricity project at Bainbridge in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The Archimedean Screw will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere each year by 80 tonnes at the same time as pumping money into local community projects.

"There is this water coming down the River Bain and we're only using it and letting it go on its way," says Yvonne Peacock, one of the directors of the scheme. "To me, it seems to be the natural way to go about things." The electricity generated will be sold to the National Grid.

Hydro electricity is just one source of renewable energy open to people living in National Parks. Small-scale wind turbines are another and the Trevelyans, who farm at Spaunton were well ahead of the game.

"Where we live is extremely windy," says Nelly Trevelyan, who farms with her husband Philip. "There's a ridge, a geological fault, where the ground steeply slopes away and then slowly rises up on to the moor, and there's nothing much between us and the North Pole."

They produce organic Swaledale lamb, as well as milling their own organic flour which is sold to some of the best names in Yorkshire. The Trevelyans' green energy audit adds up to three kilowatts worth of photovoltaic cells and four kilowatts worth of micro-wind from turbines sited on the same barn roof.

They power a set of freezers used to store meat from the organic lambs. Nelly also whizzes about in an electric car which is re-charged by plugging into their green electricity. Philip has used it to York and back.

The photovoltaic cells deliver power into the National Grid for which the Trevelyans receive about 1,200 a year, halving their electricity bill. Payments for green power comes from the feed in tariff (FIT) worth about 40p per kilowatt hour. This is the same arrangement which will benefit the community at Bainbridge when its hydro scheme is up and running in February

Another means of generating power and income is anaerobic digestion (AD) where methane gas comes from from organic waste such as food, manure, garden cuttings. At a conference on renewable energy in national parks, held last week in Ravenscar, Professor Graham Hillier from the Centre for Process Innovation at Wilton on Teesside, discussed AD potential.

"It's quite difficult in a national park, because the communities tend to be quite small," he said. "So we're following a two-pronged approach, one is to look at larger communities – Whitby, Helmsley, Kirkbymoorside. The other thing is smaller-scale AD plants. We're looking around Europe to see who produces them to see if there are any that would be relevant here."

There was good news in the recent Comprehensive Spending Review when the Chancellor, George Osborne, said the FIT would stay in place until at least 2014. Although the tariff is safe for the moment, there are fears that other cuts could jeopardise the growth of renewable energy in national parks.

The hydro generation project at Bainbridge is partly funded with 50,000 from a programme called CO2 Sense run by the soon to be abolished regional development agency Yorkshire Forward. They received the same amount from the Yorkshire Dales National Park's Millennium Trust and through shareholders they have raised 198,000.

The full 500,000 cost was finally reached by taking out a bank loan, which should be paid off in 10 years. After that any money made from the turbine will go to fund future projects such as photovoltaic generation. Mrs Peacock says the project would have struggled to get going without public funding. "The two grants we received were vital to the scheme."

David Butterworth, chief executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, says that of all the renewable schemes on the horizon in the Yorkshire Dales, only about five or six have much chance of going ahead if public funding is lost. "What we lose as well is the private money which would have co-funded these schemes, often in terms of a share option open to local people.

"The impetus to make this happen is the public funding. The issue for a number of other bodies being squeezed is, where's this money going to come from? It's short-termism gone mad to be frank."

Rick Hamilton, from CO2 Sense, says that there should still be public funding for renewable schemes when Yorkshire Forward is abolished in 2012 from the Regional Growth Fund and the Green Investment Bank. Yvonne Peacock is optimistic that the Government will continue to back schemes like theirs.

"The Government is committed to green energy. I know the cuts are serious and they're going to hit so many things, but from what I've been listening to all summer, they realise that's something in the future they can't pull away from."

CW 30/10/10