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Government plans to upgrade energy infrastructure and increase investment in clean energy

The Government last week reaffirmed its commitment to spend £730m of annual support on renewable electricity projects over this parliament, and set out further details for the next Contracts for Difference auction where companies will compete for the first £290m worth of contracts for renewable electricity projects.

The second Contracts for Difference auction will result in enough renewable electricity to power around one million homes and reduce carbon emissions by around 2.5 million tonnes per year from 2021/22 onwards. It will also allow developers of innovative renewable technologies to deliver the best deal for bill payers. For example, the maximum price for offshore wind projects is now 25% lower than was set for the last auction, and a competitive auction could bring that price down further.

The Government has also today set out proposals for the next steps to phase out electricity generation from unabated coal-fired power stations within the next decade. This long-term plan will provide confidence to investors that the UK is open to investors in new, cleaner energy capacity as we transition from coal to gas, and build a diverse energy system giving us greater security of supply, which includes record investments in renewable technology and the reliable electricity that new nuclear power investment will provide.

This will be of some comfort to the environmentally conscious, who fear that the recent election of Donald Trump to the position of President will undermine real progress in green technology globally. Trump has already dismissed global warming and there will be no encouragement of reducing carbon emissions under his administration.

Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said “We’re sending a clear signal that Britain is one of the best places in the world to invest in clean, flexible energy as we continue to upgrade our energy infrastructure.

“This is a key part of our upcoming Industrial Strategy, which will provide companies with the further support they need to innovate as we build a diverse energy system fit for the 21st century that is reliable while keeping bills down for our families and businesses.”

These are essential elements of the Government’s plan to upgrade the UK’s energy infrastructure, lower our carbon emissions and spur on the growth of large scale, low-carbon energy – a key part of the global deal to tackle climate change agreed in Paris last year.

Taking unabated coal power out of our energy mix and replacing it with cleaner technology, such as gas, will significantly reduce emissions from the UK’s energy use. The government first announced its intention to take unabated coal out of the energy mix in November last year.

The Government is also looking to end uncertainty over whether onshore wind projects on remote islands should be treated differently from onshore wind projects on mainland Great Britain. A consultation is being launched asking for views which either support or oppose this position which will be reviewed to provide a comprehensive answer.

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London Mayor criticises decision to delay new runway construction

‎Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has criticised ministers for delaying the final decision of where to build a new runway in the South-East for up to a year.

The Mayor accused the Government of ‘causing unnecessary uncertainty for British businesses already struggling with Brexit.’

His comments came after Downing Street postponed a final decision on expanding Heathrow or Gatwick until late 2017.

The decision means Article 50 – the formal move triggering Britain’s exit from the European Union – is set to be taken before any final decision on airport capacity in the South East.

Khan said “The Government’s decision to yet again delay deciding where to build a new runway will cause unnecessary uncertainty for British businesses already struggling with Brexit.

“Now more than ever, businesses need certainty and stability in order to make investment decisions and to keep jobs in Britain. Instead they are getting dither and delay.

“Now it’s time to get on with building a new runway at Gatwick, which can be built quicker, cheaper, and without the years of legal and political battles that Heathrow clearly faces.”

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Mayor commits to building more river crossings in London

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has outlined his commitment to providing greener and more public transport-focused river crossings in the East and South East of London.

The Mayor has set out a package of new river crossings to be built in the next five to 10 years that will vastly improve travel across the capital, while supporting new affordable homes and business opportunities in East London.

These include:

  • Plans for a new pedestrian and cycle bridge linking Rotherhithe & Canary Wharf to be accelerated
  • A series of enhancements to be made to the proposals for Silvertown Tunnel to make it greener and more public transport-focused, and exploring further benefits for local residents who use the tunnel
  • A DLR crossing at Gallions Reach, helping support the development of around 17,000 new homes across Newham and the Royal Borough of Greenwich
  • Further assessment work for a Barking Riverside-Abbey Wood London Overground crossing
  • Further assessment of a North Greenwich-Isle of Dogs ferry, supporting new development on the Greenwich Peninsula and the Isle of Dogs

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said “It’s no secret that London has long needed more river crossings in the east. With new homes and economic growth across East London, it becomes even more important that we deliver new greener transport links that allow Londoners to cross the river quickly and more easily.

“But we don’t want these to have a damaging impact on our environment, and that’s why I’ve reviewed and improved plans for Silvertown Tunnel and why I’m pushing forward with crossings that encourage public transport, walking and cycling.

“As we continue to unlock the massive economic potential of East London, we must secure the very best transport infrastructure that improves the quality of life for everyone living and working in the area.”

Alex Williams, Acting Managing Director of Planning at TfL, added “London’s population continues to grow and it’s vital that we do everything we can to support this to ensure that everyone can continue to move around freely and easily. The Mayor’s new vision for river crossings in East London is firmly rooted in supporting growth and providing better public transport links for all. We will now work hard to develop the designs for these new crossings, as well as identify potential funding opportunities, to allow them to be constructed more quickly.”

David Leam, Infrastructure Director at London First, concluded “Better river crossings will help unlock the economic potential of East and South East London and connect thousands of new homes in Newham, Barking, Greenwich and elsewhere. We’re delighted the Mayor has sped up these plans, aiming to deliver new ways of getting across the river within the next five to ten years.”

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HS2 CEO Simon Kirby steps down from role

The CEO of HS2 project, Simon Kirby is leaving HS2 for a new job with Rolls-Royce as chief operating officer.

Kirby was announced as CEO of HS2 Ltd in January 2014, but controversially did not join HS2 Ltd until June 2014, meaning he could cash in on a £300,000 ‘loyalty bonus’ from Network Rail. Not long after he and Chairman Sir David Higgins joined from Network Rail, it became evident that many of the projects they had been responsible were over budget and behind schedule, leading to then Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin ‘pausing’ electrification projects pending review.

On joining HS2 Ltd, Kirby became the highest paid civil servant in the country, earning £750,000, five times the salary of the Prime Minister. he justified this saying he could get the project in on time and budget, but since then both the budget and the timescales have gone the wrong way.

Simon Kirby made it clear that he is not leaving due to a loss of confidence in the project, saying in a statement on the government website: “HS2 is not just a highly ambitious project, but also one which will leave a lasting legacy for Britain. It has been, therefore, a huge honour to have been its Chief Executive and to have been involved in creating a leadership team made up of the best talents from this country and elsewhere. I have absolute confidence in their ability to deliver the project and, in doing so, to help transform the way we do things in this country.”

This is being refuted by many, with Stop HS2 Campaign Manager Joe Rukin commenting “When Simon Kirby was at Network Rail, he presided over failing projects with inflating costs and delays, but got out before anyone noticed how bad it really was. With HS2 deadlines constantly put back, spiralling costs, secret reports and devastating analyses of the project from every independent body which has investigated it, you can’t help think he is doing the same thing again, getting out before the true scale of the mess he has presided over is realised.”

“The departure of Simon Kirby will be a serious blow to those who champion HS2, though many of us are at a complete loss to see just exactly what it is he has done to justify his three-quarter of a million pay packet.”

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HS2 will still go ahead, pledges new transport secretary

The new Secretary of State for transport, pledged to continue backing HS2, following uncertainty around the project post-Brexit.

On a BBC Radio 4 interview, Chris Grayling promised not to scrap plans for high speed 2, despite suggestions having been made that HS2 is under threat of being cancelled by David Cameron and industry experts. Grayling said “I have no plans to back away from the HS2 project.”

Before the Referendum, in June, Prime Minister David Cameron addressed Yorkshire residents at the Yorkshire Post’s offices in Leeds, and warned of uncertainty for the project if Britain left the EU.

“If we stay in [the EU] all our plans are fully intact and that includes HS2, and what we have said about HS3, and the overall rail investment programme,” he said.

“If we come out, of course I’m sure we will want to try and maintain these important investments. But when you hear nine out of ten economists, the Bank of England, the Treasury, the IMF and now the National Institute [of Economic and Social Research] all saying our economy will be smaller and will generate less tax revenue, obviously that does threaten potentially some public spending programmes.”

In the interview, which took place on the BBC radio program “The World This Weekend”, the Transport Secretary explained that the importance of HS2 is two-fold; not only will it speed up transport links between the North and South, but it will also help meet an increasing infrastructural demand and ease congestion on overcrowded roads and trains.

Grayling said: “The thing that’s important for people to understand is that HS2 is not simply a speed project, it’s a capacity project. We have lines at the moment which have seen huge increases in the number of passengers, the amount of freight in recent years.”

“The west coast mainline, for example, is becoming really congested. It’s limiting the capacity of services to places like Northampton and Milton Keynes.

“Of course it makes sense, if we’re going to build a new railway line, for it to be a fast railway line, to reduce travel times from north to south. That’s logical.

“But actually we need a better transport system for the 21st century, and HS2 is part of increasing the capacity of our transport system.”

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Contracts on four HS2 stations up for grabs

HS2 are planning to hold a competition for architects to submit their design ideas for some major stations along the route.

The four major stations that are offered in the competition include Euston and Curzon Street in the city of Birmingham.

Expected to cost in excess of £43 billion in total, HS2 has released the initial schedule for forthcoming expenditure, which in this case will go towards design work on Euston, Old Oak Common, Birmingham Interchange and Curzon Street stations.

The architect-led designs could see the plans for Euston taken back to the drawing board after the desgins by Grimshaw were widely criticised by both Camden council and the landowner of the Euston estate, Sydney & London Properties.

A spokesman for HS2 said “The first stages of the procurement process for the main stations contracts will begin towards the end of the year.”

“We are still at the early stages of agreeing the contract arrangements and it may be different for south and north stations due to programme/complexity.”

This news follows recent controversies regarding materials supply chains. Ministers have been loudly proclaiming that it is imperative that Whitehall departments specify British steel throughout the project in a desperate bid to help save struggling steelworks, however, it has recently been discovered that the office in charge of procurement does not hold a record of how much it currently purchases. A revelation that many feel is reckless and irresponsible, given the fact that the very future of the UK’s biggest steel plant hangs in the balance after Indian owner Tata Steel announced last week it wants to sell its loss-making UK operations.

The knock on effect of this also jeopardises the future security of the Port Talbot works in South Wales, with some estimates suggesting that over 40,000 jobs are at risk, including workers and staff at businesses reliant in the plant.

HS2 continues to power forward in an attempt to reunite the North and South in terms of wealth and health. However, how much damage will it do along the way?

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“HS2 already changing Britain,” says chairman

The chairman of HS2 has said that the project is already changing the way private investors, as well as local and central government plan for the future in Britain.

But David Higgins said HS2 must also help change the way we deliver infrastructure in this country as soon as we can reap the benefits for future projects such as Hinckley Point.

Mr Higgins made his comments in a speech in Manchester marking the second anniversary of the launch of his first report in the city.

In that two years, he said, not only had the concept of re-balancing the British economy taken root, people were beginning the process of making it a reality, helped by the moves towards devolution.

Local authorities and enterprise partnerships not just in Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, but also in the North West, the East and West Midlands, and Yorkshire were using HS2 not just to re-think their transport systems, but also how they attract private investment to their areas – and business has responded.

They were taking responsibility for transforming both their local economies and the overall balance of the national economy.

Companies such as Burberry in Leeds, HSBC in Birmingham, Interserve in Solihull are beginning to recognise the benefits of the extra connectivity and capacity that HS2 will deliver – as are potential investors elsewhere.

The potential for that transformation is outlined in a report published by HS2 today – HS2: Changing Britain.

The report also outlines how HS2 is already changing the perceptions and ambitions of the next generation quoting Cheshire East councillor, Rachel Bailey, as saying that it is already having a tangible effect in Crewe:

“That difference is being felt in schools because it is helping to lift pupils’ horizons, particularly on skills.”

But Sir David also challenged the UK infrastructure industry to learn the lessons of construction elsewhere and become more streamlined in its approach.

A series of factors, he said, made the UK industry less cost effective: a history of stop/go which prevented firms investing in skills, innovation and technology; fragmentation leading to multiple overhead costs plus a lack of co-ordination between design and construction.

HS2, he said, was determined to adopt a new approach which would bear down on those factors and transform the way we deliver infrastructure in this country, without compromising HS2’s strategic objective to re-balance the British economy.

That approach would include:

  • early contractor involvement to drive innovation and efficiencies in design and methodology
  • adopting enabling works contracts to clear the line of route ahead of the main civils works
  • incentivising companies to out-perform
  • adopting techniques new to this country such as linear construction, which uses the newly constructed route as a supply chain access

“As a twenty year project we have no excuse not to become more streamlined in our approach and not to innovate.”

Sir David said the lessons learnt from applying this approach to Phase One would be then be transferred to Phase Two.

You can view the report here.
You can read the speech here.

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HS2 cost jumps by £5.6bn

Group campaigning against HS2 have highlighted large disparities in figures predicted by HS2 officials and politicians and the actual financial cost to Britain.

George Osborne announced as part of the Autumn Statement that there would be a £20bn increase in transport infrastructure spending. However, what he didn’t mention is that over a quarter of this is accounted for by an 11% increase in the cost of building HS2. Paragraph 2.85 of the Autumn Statement states:

“Construction will begin on HS2 during the Parliament, and the Spending Review confirms a funding envelope of £55.7 billion in 2015 prices, which will deliver HS2 from London to Birmingham by 2026, and to Leeds and Manchester by 2033.”

Up until now, the official cost of the construction of HS2 has been stated as £42.6bn in 2011 prices, with a further £7.5bn added for the cost of trains, so £55.7bn represents an increase of £5.6bn, or 11%. This figure for the overall cost of the HS2 project is almost double the original estimate published in 2010.

Mr Osborne also said that along with HS2, the Great Western, Trans Pennine and Midland Mainline electrification projects can go ahead. As all of these projects have been beset with serious budget problems, it is likely that the increase in capital spend within the Department for Transport is simply to cover the cost over-runs which have been caused by chronic mismanagement.

Back in July the Trans Pennine and Midland Mainline projects were ‘paused’ by Government due to mismanagement and cost over-runs, only for them to be given the go-ahead in September. However, the costs of these projects is unclear. Just last week the Public Accounts Committee said it was “staggering and unacceptable” that current estimates for Great Western Electrification stand at £2.8bn, against a budget in 2013 of just £874m.

This news comes just a day after it was revealed that 46 members of staff at HS2 Ltd are paid more than the Prime Minister.

Stop HS2 Campaign Manager Joe Rukin responded “HS2 is abysmal value for money, and the increasingly dogmatic support for this white elephant and its’ spiralling costs is completely unfathomable. An 11% increase in the projected costs for construction is shameful after promises that the costs would be kept under control, but it is just another in a long line of HS2 cost hikes, and there will be more to come.”

“With trains not due to run for over another decade, who knows where the cost of this vanity project will end up and what else will have to be cut to pay for it? A responsible chancellor would be asking serious questions about whether HS2 is really worth it, not chucking more money at a boondoggle which would only benefit the richest in society. This is simply rewarding chronic mismanagement, and signalling that there is no need for budgetary control when it comes to HS2.”

Penny Gaines Chair of Stop HS2 added “HS2 is clearly a white elephant. Transport in the North does need improvement, but it isn’t the links to London which are holding back the economies of the North. It’s the ability to cross the Pennines, it’s getting into city centres from local towns. This is where the money needs spending on transport, not on one big showy railway line.”

“The government should make the decision to cancel HS2. There are far better uses for the money, which will have far better long and short term results. The people in charge of Network Rail when the now-delayed electrification programme was being developed are now in charge of HS2. They made a mess of that, and now they are making a mess of HS2.”

“Time and again, the government and HS2 Ltd have been overly optimistic about the cost of building HS2. It’s almost as if they picked a figure for the costs which was just about politically bearable, and then they hope no-one will notice when they increase it.”

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GE to deliver 50% energy savings with Santander infrastructure upgrade

GE is to deliver energy savings of more than 50% and cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7,000 tonnes annually with Santander lighting infrastructure upgrade.

Demonstrating that corporations no longer have to choose between ‘profit and planet’, GE has delivered a cash-positive lighting infrastructure upgrade for the UK business of global banking institution Santander.

As the UK’s biggest ever fully-funded LED lighting retrofit, the project will see 90,000 new lights installed across the bank’s UK estate of 800 branches and 13 office buildings – slashing energy use in half and reducing carbon emissions by more than 7,000 tonnes each year.

Providing a full scope solution, GE will deliver lighting services throughout the 10-year contract, which includes optimised system design, installation, maintenance and management.

Importantly, the project is to be delivered using a cash-positive financing model, in a move that is set to reinvent the way companies think about investment in energy efficient lighting upgrades. The model includes a substantial investment of £17.5 million by the UK Green Investment Bank plc and Sustainable Development Capital Limited, making it the biggest LED-financing package the UK has ever seen.

This unconventional approach, in which the financing partners enable the lighting to be procured as a service rather than a product purchase, allows Santander to benefit from the reduced operating costs and improved energy efficiency of the LED lighting but without the capital investment and impact on the balance sheet – a flexible solution that could pave the way for many other organisations to follow suit.

Dan Vinton, CFO of GE Lighting EMEA, commented: “The lighting industry has changed dramatically in the last few years, moving away from supplying product as a simple disposable commodity, to providing high value solutions to customers while becoming a true energy efficiency partner. The old models of the lighting industry are no longer fit for purpose in this new market and this project represents a glimpse into the new world.”

“More than anything, this project has been about listening to our customer’s needs and working with them to develop a tailored package of lighting and finance solutions that perfectly meet their requirements. The strength, credibility and expertise represented by the GE brand helped make the project bankable which was a key element of success. We’re privileged to have been able to walk this learning journey together with our partners and proud of what we have accomplished here. We are now focused on scaling this offering more broadly and allowing more customers in our target markets and verticals to benefit from this type of smart value creation.”

Nick Roberts, Property Director, at Santander, said: “We launched our 20-20-15 energy efficiency strategy three years ago, in which we committed to reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2015. LED lighting has become an integral part of our Energy Efficiency Plan and plays a key role in achieving these overall sustainability goals. Through this lighting upgrade we have taken a huge step forward in executing our long-term efficiency objectives, with GE providing the support, scale and suitable products that we needed.”

For more information please visit www.ge.com.

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VIDEO: Giant bridge building machine begins work on Mersey Gateway Bridge

A 157m long, 22m wide, 1,500-tonne machine called Trinity has begun work on the Mersey Gateway crossing.

Described as looking like a giant Meccano structure, Trinity is a movable scaffolding system that will attach to the bridge piers and enable the elevated approach viaducts to be built over the Mersey estuary.

The machine will act as a giant concrete mould for the deck of the approach viaducts, which will be constructed in sections (known as ‘spans’) of approx 70m in length. It will take up to two weeks to build each span.

Trinity started construction work in Widnes on Thursday with a concrete pour for the first deck section of the northern approach viaduct, which will lead to the new bridge. The first pour lasted 24 hours and consumed an impressive 160 truckloads of concrete, poured into the 1,170 m3 formwork mould.

It took three months to assemble her on site from 1,200 component parts held together by more than 60,000 bolts. She will now be on site for the next 14 months.

General Manager of the Merseylink contracting joint venture, Hugh O’Connor said “This is a hugely exciting time for our construction teams. An enormous amount of effort has gone into preparing and testing Trinity ahead of today’s concrete pour. We are delighted to achieve this important milestone and get this next phase of the project underway.”

Once the bridge is complete, the equipment is set to be dismantled and recycled. Making it an innovative and sustainable one of a kind!

See how the machine works in the below video:

Watch the full version of the 3D fly-through of the plans for the Mersey Gateway Project below. This includes a look at the route, the main crossing and the construction methods.

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