Micro Systems
The Energy Savings Trust has estimated that micro-generation could provide a significantly increased proportion of the UK's electricity demand by 2050 although only a fraction of this would come from renewable sources. The current Scottish output is negligible. In May 2006 the then Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm launched a Planning Advice Note aimed at promoting micro-renewables. Small-scale 'wind2heat' projects, which use wind turbines to power electrical storage heaters directly, have proven to be successful in remoter rural areas; as have various other local schemes such as air source heat pumps.
Whisky distilleries may have a locally important part to play. Caithness Heat and Power have announced plans to tackle fuel poverty in Wick by utilising a wood chip CHP scheme in partnership with the Old Pulteney Distillery. On the island of Islay, a swimming pool is heated using waste heat from the Bowmore distillery. In Edinburgh, Tynecastle High School, due to be completed in 2010, will be heated by waste heat from the neighbouring North British Distillery. In 2009 the Diageo Cameron Bridge distillery announced plans for a £65 million facility to generate energy from the spent "wash" created in the manufacturing process, which will aim to replace 95% of the plan's existing fossil fuel use.
There are also a growing number of Micro hydro systems on smaller watercourses, especially in more remote rural locations.
Read more about this topic: Renewable Energy In Scotland
Famous quotes containing the word systems:
“The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray’s Anatomy.”
—J.G. (James Graham)