 How much CO2 will my renewable electricity generating project save?
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How much CO2 will my renewable heat project save?
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Where is my nearest wood fuel supplier?
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What are ROCs worth?
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What is the Renewables Obligation and how does it work?
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What qualifies for ROCs / What counts towards the Renewables Obligation?
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Where can I find out how much woodfuel might be available for a renewable energy project?
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What does this mean? Is there a glossary of terms?
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Can I get a grant for a small biomass heat or CHP project?
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How do I convert between different energy units?
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What is the NFFO? / Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation?
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Why should we pay a premium for renewables?
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Show me a map of renewable energy projects in the UK
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How much electricity will this project generate each year?
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How many households’ electricity needs will this renewable energy project meet?
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How much CO2 will my renewable electricity generating project save?
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Every unit of electricity that is generated from a renewable energy source results in a direct saving of greenhouse gases that would have been produced had that unit of electricity been generated by non-renewable plant. First, work out how much electricity will be generated by the plant. Multiply the capacity by the load factor, and then by 8760 (number of hours in a year). Then multiply the answer by a factor given in the table below, to give the amount of CO2 saved per year.
| Emission |
CO2 |
NOx |
SOx |
Most appropriate context |
| Coal |
952 |
11.8 |
4.3 |
Marginal, real-time emissions savings, or longer term view if based on premature closure of coal-fired plant |
| Gas |
446 |
0.5 |
- |
Longer term view, based on avoided new gas capacity |
| Average |
514 |
1.2 |
2.4 |
General, non-specific scenario |
For information about which figures to use, see Emissions savings for Renewable Energy
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How much CO2 will my renewable heat project save?
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Solar thermal used for domestic water heating usually displaces either electricity or gas, and on this basis, quantifying emissions is very straightforward. Natural gas, when used for heat production emits 224 g CO2/KWhth. If a house with a solar thermal panel otherwise heats water by electric immersion heater, then greater savings are achieved. It would be most appropriate to use the average plant mix, in this context, thus savings are 514gCO2/KWhth
Similar savings are achieved from heat production from biomass, again depending the form of heating that is being displaced. The table below can be used, to show savings.
| Heating source displaced by biomass |
Emission saving, g/kWhth or Kg/MWth |
| Natural Gas |
224.4 |
| Kerosene |
287 |
| Diesel Oil |
296 |
| LPG |
252 |
| Coal |
432 |
| Indicative off-grid mix |
321 |
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Where is my nearest wood fuel supplier?
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Visit the logpile website to see to an online database of wood fuel suppliers. It enables you to search for the nearest wood fuel supplier in your locality. It is suitable for small scale users, see the Woodfuel Resource website if you are a project developer looking for larger-scle fuel supplies.
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What are ROCs worth?
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The further we are away from reaching the percentage of renewables required by the Renewables Obligation the more ROCs are worth.
The buy out price sets a floor price (unless the obligation is met in full - see below) but there is no ceiling price. There is a mathematical relationship between the size of the Obligation, the level of the shortfall and the theoretical value of a ROC.
To see how this works in detail see an article by Gaynor Hartnell (though written some time ago, it explains the workings.
To see recent ROC prices.. look at the NFFO and SRO auction prices, on the NFPA website NFPA website.
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What is the Renewables Obligation and how does it work?
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In simple terms the Renewables Obligation makes Licensed Electricity Suppliers source an increasing proportion of their electricity from renewables, or else pay a financial penalty.
See RO annual quotas & buy-out price in table below (years refer to year ending 31st March)
| 2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
p.a. to |
2016 |
| 3.0% |
4.3 |
4.9 |
5.5 |
6.7 |
7.9 |
9.1 |
9.7 |
10.4 |
+1% |
15.4% |
| £30.00 |
£30.51 |
£31.59 |
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the penalty is an index linked £30 for every MWh that they suppliers fall short of their target.
The buy out money is recycled back to suppliers in proportion to how much renewable electricity they supplied.
Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) are the currency of the Obligation and ROCs are used as proof of compliance. Most, but not all, renewable electricity qualifies for ROCs.
see other questions on this FAQ list
What qualifies for ROCs?
What are ROCs worth?
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What qualifies for ROCs / What counts towards the Renewables Obligation?
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The text below is a very general introduction. Refer to the legislation for detail - as it can get complicated!
In the relatively straightforward category is Wind, wave, tidal stream, PV, landfill gas, sewage gas and biogas from Anaerobic Digestion. All generating stations would qualify if built after 1990.
It is a bit more complicated, in the case of pure biomass (the fuel has to be less than 2% contaminated by fossil fuels, and various other restrictions); and hydro which qualifies whatever its size if built after 1990, and if it is refurbished and under 20MW. All micro-hydro plant, whenever it was built gets ROCs if it is 1.25MW or less.
The biomass fraction of waste gets ROCs, provided that an "advanced technology" is used, ie gasification or pyrolysis. AD of any waste qualifies for ROCs.
Where it gets complicated is in the case of Co-firing biomass with fossil fuels and for generators located on site of a NFFO project.
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Where can I find out how much woodfuel might be available for a renewable energy project?
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The Woodfuel Resource Website details the background, aims and methods used in a study of the potentially available Woodfuel Resource in Great Britain, and presents the findings in an interactive manner. This enables users to request the data they are interested in by geographic region, type of woodfuel resource and by various classes of resource.
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What does this mean? Is there a glossary of terms?
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We have reproduced the glossary from the RPA Renewables Yearbook 2004. To look up terms starting A -D, click here, for terms starting E - N, click here, and for O - Z, click here. If we've missed something out, .
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Can I get a grant for a small biomass heat or CHP project?
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Look on the Clear Skies website - but also, see below information on grants under the DTI’s Bioenergy Capital Grants scheme, for installing clusters of heat only or CHP units.
| Project name |
Type of project |
Contact |
| Countryside Properties plc |
CHP plant up to 0.26MWe and 0.26-0.4MW th |
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| Econergy Ltd |
Clusters of heating systems, to a total of 19.6MW thermal |
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| Lignatherm |
Boilers totalling 7.5MW thermal in yr1, possibly increasing by 13MW per year |
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| Nottingham Woodheat Project |
Cluster of heating systems, to a total of 4MW th |
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| Rural Energy Ltd |
Large cluster of small scale heating systems, to a total of 27MW th |
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| Wood Energy Ltd |
Clusters of heating systems, to a total of 10MW thermal |
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How do I convert between different energy units?
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Use this simple table below…..
| Unit |
multiplied by |
Approximate Conversion Factor |
equals |
Unit |
| kilowatt hours (kWh) |
X |
3.6 |
= |
megajoules (MJ) |
| tonnes of oil equivalent |
X |
41.868 |
= |
gigajoules (GJ) |
| tonnes of oil equivalent |
X |
11,630 |
= |
kilowatt hours (kWh) |
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What is the NFFO? / Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation?
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The NFFFO was a policy initiated in 1990. It raised money via the fossil fuel levy - to pay for the additional costs of nuclear power and renewables. Initially most of the levy went towards nuclear - but over time the overall size of the levy was reduced, whilst the proportion going to renewables, as opposed to nuclear, increased..
The policy resulted in contracts being awarded to renewables generators in order to "secure" a total of 1500MW dnc of renewable by 2000. (For meaning of dnc see glossary.
In all over 3600 MW dnc of renewable capacity was awarded contracts, but much of it was never commissioned. (See paper by G. Hartnell March 2000 on Planning and Renewables : Implications for meeting the targets for background on progress towards NFFO targets.
See descriptions of the NFFO policy on the DTI website
Key features of this policy were the "bankable" contracts which facilitated project financing, and the ability to stimulate renewables' deployment across a range of technologies at different stages of commercial development.
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Why should we pay a premium for renewables?
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The first question to answer is who is doing the paying? One thing is certain; customers of today are not paying the full costs for their energy use. For example, the costs of a changing climate will fall mainly on future generations. It is clearly unfair to pollute the planet and make future generations pay - and that is why Governments across the world are attempting to combat climate change. Increasing the use of renewable energy is one of many measures being taken.
There are two ways of promoting renewables by tilting market conditions to deliver a more sustainable energy future. One is to make sure that today’s consumers pay the full price of energy. That means paying up now for climate change impacts and the costs of dealing with nuclear waste management. This would push energy costs up and there would be no need to subsidise renewables. However this is awkward politically – and it is impossible to know exactly what the true costs should be.
The other way is to subsidise sustainable energy options, to make them competitive, leaving other energy costs broadly where they are. This is politically easier to implement - and that is why we have a Renewables Obligation. (The RPA would like to see other sectors of renewables similarly incentivised, see proposals for a renewable heat obligation.
It is a price we believe is well worth paying!
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Show me a map of renewable energy projects in the UK
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The RPA holds probably the UK’s most comprehensive database of renewable energy projects, used to provide the primary input for our Renewables Yearbook.
Following a request for data for a Government report, this has now been mapped to show the projects by location. See a consolidated map for all resources, from where you will find links to separate maps for
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How much electricity will this project generate each year?
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To calculate this, multiply the
Capacity (in MW) x capacity factor (see table below) x 8760 (the number of hours in a year)
Typical capacity factors
| Technology |
Typical load factor |
| Wind |
0.25 – 0.4 depending on location (0.3 most often used) |
| Combustion projects, eg landfill gas, sewage gas, AD, biomass, etc |
0.85 |
| Wave |
0.30 |
| Tidal stream |
0.4 |
| Solar photovoltaics |
Summer, up to 0.2, winter under 0.05 and annual average, the figure to use in this context, 0.13 |
This will give you a MWh figure (Megawatt hours) for one year
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How many households’ electricity needs will this renewable energy project meet?
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The number of households served is often used as a way of getting across the benefits of a proposed development. Take the output figure (MWh) and divide it by one of the figures in the table below.
| MWh per year |
context |
| 4.5 |
This is the overall average and is based on taking the total domestic electricity consumption in the UK and dividing it by the total number of households. The RPA believes this is the best number to use, but sometimes the number below is used. |
| 3.7 |
This is the annual average for households connected to the gas network and that use gas for cooking and heating. |
| 3.3 |
This is the figure currently accepted by Energywatch. It was also accepted by the Advertising Standards Authority in a recent rejection of a complaint about output claims. |
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Welcome to the Renewable Power Association Online F-A-Q. Here you will find answers to common enquiries that we receive.
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