A convenient truth

You may have heard all the gloomy stories before, or even told them yourself. Nonetheless, Al Gore’s movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' is probably becoming the best attended lecture ever. By making climate change increasingly difficult to trivialize or ignore, it may even be creating the kind of momentum that brings about an important change in human consciousness.

Meanwhile, Ecofys continues to provide convenient solutions for the issues at hand. All over Europe, and lately yet further afield. As ever, by implementing policies and systems that increase energy efficiency and provide clean supplies of energy, we’re undertaking action that is pragmatic yet innovative.

Below you can read about some recent examples of our work, with convenient links to experts who can provide viable solutions. Thanks for your interest!

Yours sincerely,
Freerk Bisschop
Director

For more information or your reaction, you may contact Freerk Bisschop via email.

In this newsletter:

• Ecofys helps reducing energy costs in UK pubs
• Check it Out! Energy-saving school project goes international
• Ecofys writes two NAPs for Romania in just five months
• First boat in the Netherlands to run on hydrogen
• Voluntary credits for Turkey

Ecofys helps reducing energy costs in UK pubs

More and more companies are seeing the financial advantages of cutting down on their energy use. Recently, Enterprise Inns, a British pub chain with 9,000 pubs in England, Wales and Scotland, asked Ecofys UK to develop a carbon-management programme to reduce their pubs’ current energy consumption and 400-Ktonne CO2 footprint.

Enterprise Inns’ main reason for developing a carbon-management programme is its energy bills, which are high and rising, having doubled over the past two years. And while Enterprise are like many other large companies in having a growing need to demonstrate their effective management of environmental issues, they also want to improve their relationship with their tenants and pub staff.

Carbon management is an excellent way to do this, as it involves various forms of action that focus on  minimising and exploiting the impacts of an economy that is becoming increasingly ‘carbon constrained’. A key issue for the pubs will be the development of solutions that can be rolled out easily across the group.

To build on current knowledge about energy and carbon management within Enterprise Inns, a scoping study has been undertaken. After defining the conditions and priorities for a full carbon-management project, this indicated the likely financial implications of implementing it, and outlined the steps to be followed, specifying the timescales, milestones and outputs to be delivered, and also the resources.

To implement the recommendations of the Scoping Study, Ecofys is now working closely with key personnel from Enterprise Inns. As well as setting up maintenance, an energy-aggregation programme, a relighting campaign and a replacement programme for heating and refrigeration, we are developing an awareness campaign among pub managers and other staff. Our independent, fresh view is based on our knowledge of carbon-management projects in other companies and sectors, our contacts in the industry and our experience of other projects in the pub sector.

For more details, please contact Rolph Spaas

Check it out! Energy-saving school project goes international

The international launch of the Check it out! school project took place on October 16. The European part of the project, which is coordinated by Ecofys NL and supported by the European Commission, will link energy savings with education on sustainable development at schools in Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain. 

Ecofys was also involved in the development of the project in the Netherlands. Check it out! takes a unique, integrated approach to energy saving in schools. It supports a wide range of actors, including those in charge of renovating school buildings and those responsible for implementing energy-saving measures. As well as creating a common educational platform on energy conservation that ensures the involvement of pupils in energy issues in school and at home, it will also disseminate best practices on improving energy performance in buildings.

To monitor energy performance and the most effective energy-saving measures, the project will map energy performance in over a hundred school buildings. To work towards further improvements, a number of pilot schools will be helped to implement energy-saving measures. Throughout the project, national and local results will be disseminated throughout Europe. Check it out! will also contribute to raising awareness of the potential for saving energy in a wide range of existing buildings.

Check it out! will run for 30 months. The European part of the project involves collaboration between eight partners. Overall, it is linked with the international Eco Schools projects, a UN-certified programme for environmental and sustainable solutions in education. Worldwide, 12,000 schools are involved in 34 countries.

For more details, please contact Giel Linthorst

Ecofys writes two NAPs for Romania in just five months

A dynamic international team of ‘hands-on’ experts led by Ecofys has assisted the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Water Management in developing its National Allocation Plan (NAP). The team also helped implement the country’s monitoring and reporting system. Ecofys successfully met the challenge of developing the NAPs for the first and second periods (i.e. 2007 and 2008-2012) within only five months. In other EU countries, the previous average for developing a single NAP was 18 months.

Romania, which will join the European Union on 1 January 2007, intends to participate in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) immediately from the date of entry. This requires the country to turn EU directives into national legislation. One of these is the Directive on Emissions Trading.

Together with CAP SD from the Netherlands and local experts in Romania, Ecofys was quick to solve the problem posed by this tight schedule. As Monique Voogt, Energy & Climate Strategies Director at Ecofys, states, “It was an enormous challenge – we knew we’d have only five months to draft the legal documents for implementing the ETS. Normally these drafts are assessed only by Ministry assessors; then, after the whole process has finished, the other Ministries involved assess it all again. To avoid political risks – and thus time-consuming discussions at the political level – we insisted that each of the three Ministries concerned (Administration, Environment & Water Management, and Trade & Industry) would simultaneously assess and approve every key decision taken during the project.”

Another way of solving the time problem involved a decision to use the same methodology to write the two NAPs at the same time. Even so, the team, which involved staff from the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, found themselves in a race against the clock. At any one time, at least one team member spent a few days a week in Romania, organising information sessions, training emission authorities and government staff, and managing a large Romanian team of experts at various institutes. Each of these team members had previously worked extensively with various authorities to implement the EU ETS – not only with the Dutch, Polish, British, Irish and Belgian governments, but also with the European Commission.

The draft NAPs were published in August. Within the foreseeable future, when the consultation round is finished, the final texts will be submitted to the European Commission for approval.

For more details, please contact Monique Voogt

First boat in the Netherlands to run on hydrogen

This summer, during the Frisian Nuon Solar Challenge, Ecofys and the Knowledge Center Yacht Building launched the first Dutch fuel cell boat. This electrically powered sloop, which is equipped with fuel cells and uses hydrogen as fuel, did not actually participate in the race for solar boats. The sloop was used as a ‘chase express’ for the VIPs attending the event.

The sloop, Hydrogen Xperiance, which was developed by Ecofys in collaboration with Ganita Shipyard and the Knowledge Centre for Yacht Building, is subsidized by the Province of Friesland and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. At Ecofys, as one of the initiators of the project, we believe that fuel cells can play an important role in stimulating wider use of electric boats.

The sloop can sail for two to three days without refuelling. What’s more, a fuel cell boat can be recharged within 15 minutes simply by replacing the hydrogen cylinders, as against the 4 to 6 hours needed to of recharge traditional electric boats. Another advantage of the fuel cell boat compared to traditional craft is that it is completely silent and doesn’t produce any (noxious) fumes.

The expectation is that the Hydrogen Xperiance will lead to greater utilisation of fuel cell technology in the water transportation sector, and provide a boost to electric boating in general. Ecofys sees the boating sector as an attractive niche market for fuel cell applications and is therefore currently developing fuel cell demonstrations for a range of boats, including super yachts and canal boats.

If you want to take a trip on the Hydrogen Xperiance yourself, you can book it for a workshop, conference or business group (max. 10 passengers). The boat is available for rent from any location in the Netherlands that is accessible by water.

For more details, please contact Robert van den Hoed

Voluntary credits for Turkey

Ecofys is helping the Turkish wind farm Anemon Intepe to register and sell  carbon credits on the Voluntary Carbon Offset market.

Anemon Enerji, which is part of the Turkish company Demirer Enerji, is currently building and will be operating a 30.4 MW wind farm in the Province of Çanakkale. Based on anticipated electricity output of 108,000 MWh per year, the emission reduction will amount to 54,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. Ecofys’ role is to developing this emission-reduction project into one that will generate credits for the voluntary carbon offset market.

Demirer Enerji is active in the field of innovative renewable energy projects. Their range of services include making surveys of the potential for wind energy in various parts of Turkey as well as building wind-power plants and selling the energy they generate. Anemon Enerji views Anemon Intepe as a Voluntary Emission Reduction Project, because it needs the additional income stream to cover corporate risks and to meet various financial commitments.

Ecofys will assist Demirer Enerji by developing carbon credit-related documentation and by marketing the credits on the voluntary carbon offset market.

For more details, please contact Stefan Leclaire