Low carbon, smart energy scheme in Peterborough aims to deliver a significant drop in CO2 emissions by 2030, while cutting energy bills by up to a quarter.
Scheme could be rolled out to other UK towns and cities to help UK achieve its Net Zero ambitions
Project is being led by Peterborough City Council, whose partners include SSE Enterprise, Element Energy, Cranfield University, Smarter Grid Solutions and Sweco UK.
Today (23rd July 2020), sees the launch of plans for the largest smart city-wide, low carbon energy system in the UK.
Launched at an online event, Peterborough Integrated Renewables Infrastructure project (PIRI) aims to deliver a significant drop in CO2 emissions by 2030, while cutting energy bills by up to a quarter. Peterborough is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK and is facing a significant increase in energy demand as the city continues to grow.
The two-year project has been granted funding from UK Research and Innovation, alongside corporate investment, to design a low carbon, smart energy system for the city. The partnership includes Peterborough City Council, SSE Enterprise, Element Energy, Cranfield University, Smarter Grid Solutions and Sweco UK.
PIRI combines a next generation heat network, electricity network and electric vehicle infrastructure under one smart holistic scheme. If successful, the scheme could be rolled out to other cities and towns, to help the UK realise its ambitions of Net Zero by 2050.
The project over the next two years will deliver cleaner, cheaper energy and the benefits of the scheme include:
Locally produced, cleaner energy and heat from waste and with services being low carbon driven
Multi-utility infrastructure delivery, meaning lower costs and lower bills for consumers
Integrated billing and service for heat, electricity and mobility (such as electric vehicle charging) so customers can benefit
Low carbon technology made available at cost-effective connection cost
Transparent tariff setting will generate long-term savings for local authorities
The PIRI project brings together energy generation, demand and storage, thereby unlocking efficiencies not deliverable under existing, traditional energy systems. It is envisaged to be especially effective in areas where the electricity network is constrained; as well serving as a blueprint for other urban locations across the UK.
Elliot Smith, PIRI Programme Lead at Peterborough City Council, explains; “This is a highly innovative project — one of the most ambitious nationally and one which could become the most significant in the UK’s transition to low carbon infrastructure. For Peterborough, it has substantial benefits and supports the sustainable growth of the city.”
Professor Philip Longhurst, Head of the Centre for Climate and Environment Protection at Cranfield University, said: “For the UK to achieve its ambitions of Net Zero, we are going to have to do things differently. These plans announced today for the PIRI project show how local low carbon, smart energy systems could be used across the UK for the benefit of both the environment and consumers. At Cranfield, we pride ourselves on the practical
application of our low carbon technology research and our close links with industry, PIRI is a fantastic example of that in action.”
Neil Kirkby, Managing Director of SSE Enterprise, said: “SSE Enterprise sees PIRI as a progressive project that will showcase the potential of smart urban energy systems and help drive local decarbonisation in a commercially viable manner. It builds on the ‘whole system approach’ that our distributed energy business offers; where we look to integrate different energy elements into one investable solution and thereby make savings for customers. As PIRI develops we’ll be able to show how city living and regeneration can be enhanced and we expect this project to serve as a blueprint for other urban locations across the UK.”
Dr Tanja Groth, Director of Urban Energy at Sweco UK, said “To maximise benefits to consumers and businesses while addressing the climate emergency we need to move away from incremental improvements to isolated energy segments and instead move towards transformational change to the whole energy system. PIRI is applying best-practice innovation in a city-scale energy regeneration project, demonstrating that this approach not only delivers aggressive reductions in carbon but provides resilience, lowers consumer energy costs and provides wider societal benefits such as improved local air quality, more efficient use of local resources and stimulates the local economy.”
Shane Slater, Element Energy’s founding director and Smart Energy Systems team leader, said: “Our future energy supply can be clean and cost-effective, but this comes with the key challenge of greater variability in renewable energy generation. Element is delighted to be part of PIRI, which will demonstrate how balancing energy supply with demand from a diverse range of users of heat, transport, and electricity in Peterborough, across day-to-day and seasonal variations, can deliver an efficient energy infrastructure that will be clean, secure and affordable for decades to come.”
Dr Graham Ault, Director at Smarter Grid Solutions, said, “Locally led solutions to the climate challenge are essential and the leadership and ambition being shown in Peterborough is exemplary. The design of smart, flexible, clean and decentralised energy systems is both challenging and a great opportunity. Our work across the UK, Europe and US is showing us the core role and high value of our software products for flexible, intelligent control of energy assets required in smart local energy systems. We welcome the opportunity to harness what we have learned about the management, grid integration and market interconnection of distributed energy resources and bring this to the design of the Peterborough system alongside all the project partners.”
Rob Saunders, UKRI — Challenge Director, leading the £100m ‘Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme’, said, “PIRI brings together a highly ambitious, forward –ooking city like Peterborough, with the best innovations in Smart Energy by one of the UK’s leading SMEs in this sector — Smart Grid Solutions, with the deep network experience of SSE, a combined knowledge of Cranfield University and Element Energy, and the delivery track record of a large organisation like Sweco. This project is set up really effectively, to be able to deliver this complex, system project.”
Coca-Cola rethought all of their packaging in order to decrease their environmental output. All cans and bottles are now either recyclable or contain recycled material. This is in addition to the completely new development of PlantBottle™ in 2009; a new fully recyclable PET bottle that is made partially from a plant-based material (up to 30% renewable materials such as sugarcane). Coca-Cola stated that by July 2016 they have distributed more that 40 billion of these bottles in 50 countries and that this new development has eliminated the equivalent of more that 315,000 metric tons of Carbon Dioxide emissions from the PET plastic bottles. http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/blog/circular-economy-shaping-the-future-of-consumption
Coca-Cola does not only limit the innovation to packaging, they have also rethought their distribution process. This includes backhauling, which ensures that there is never an empty truck on the road, therefore minimising the amount of lorries needed and aiming to reduce the energy and carbon footprint of the distribution process. http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/what-is-the-circular-economy-and-why-does-it-matter-to-coca-cola
Skanska
Skanska have recently rethought their attitude to sustainability and green ventures and now have a rating scale of their projects from Vanilla to Green to Deep Green.
A Deep Green project achieves zero environmental impact on at least three of the six core areas:
net zero primary energy
near-zero carbon in construction
zero waste
zero hazardous materials
zero unsustainable materials
net zero water for buildings and zero potable water for civil and infrastructure construction
Skanska’s first Deep Green Project was completed in 2015 at the Bentley Works facility in Doncaster. This facility was built from sustainable sources, as well as generating its own electricity, harvesting its water and has a near zero carbon footprint. As well as these achievements no hazardous materials were used during the construction and zero waste was sent to landfill. http://www.skanska.co.uk/about-skanska/sustainability/green/how-we-measure-green/
Toast Ale
Toast Ale uses leftover bread from sandwich factories and bakeries in their brewing process. Toast Ale has rethought their brewing process to include this bread, cutting down on the amount of malt used by 40% as well as helping hop utilisation. This also provides a unique marketing point for the brewery.
MUD Jeans have rethought the production and distribution of jeans. Instead of selling jeans they lease them for a small upfront cost and then a monthly fee for one year. After a year the consumer can either keep them, or send them back and receive a new pair, with the monthly fee continuing if you opt for a new pair. The jeans sent back to MUD are recycled and re-used by being cut, shredded, spun, re-dyed and re-weaved into new jeans.
The Agency of Design looks at the implications of circular design on products, and how they can be best designed for a circular economy. Product designs include a toaster with end of life considerations included in the initial design process. Three different toasters were developed: The Optimist, The Pragmatist and The Realist. Toasters are often not recycled – but rather placed into the household bin; as they are small, generally low value items that people are unwilling to make a special trip to a recycling centre for.
The Optimist was designed to eradicate obsolescence, as it is intended to last for generations. This toaster is made from cast aluminium with arms that rotate from the side rather than a complex popping mechanism. In addition four bolts on the base provide access to the inside for easy replacement of elements. The aluminium used in the initial prototype was made of 100% recycled content, therefore cutting down on the use of raw materials.
The Pragmatist was specifically designed with a modular design to connect the manufacturer and consumer, so if any element within the toaster fails then the broken slot can be detached and returned to the manufacturer to be replaced and the unit will continue to function until the replacement arrives. The modules are letterbox sized to try and encourage return rather than simply putting the module in the bin. Each module can be put through the cycle nine times.
The Realist was a cheaper toaster and a closed loop solution, with the cheapest disassembly method possible. This method involved a small pellet sitting next to a snap fit joint, which under vacuum allows the non-destructive separation of materials, and therefore their reuse if possible.
RePack is a packaging rethink and a business model redesign founded in Finland. RePack aims to promote packaging reuse on a model much like the bottle deposit scheme, and therefore familiar to consumers. RePack packaging comes in three sizes and the materials used are 100% recycled and recyclable. The return process is made attractive by the addition of a voucher delivered to your email address once the packaging has been returned. The return itself is free of charge and uses the postal system, avoiding an overcomplicated and convoluted process that may put the consumer off returns. Each piece of packaging is designed to be re-used at least 20 times, with some reported as being used 50 times- therefore cutting CO2 emissions for packaging production by 80%.
There have been 50,000 RePack transactions, with 30 web stores, mainly in Finland, offering RePack as a packaging option.
Gerrard Street are a relatively new headphone brand that bases its appeal on a monthly fee for headphones rather than an upfront cost, these headphones will be replaced and upgraded as needed for no extra cost. The monthly fee covers the initial purchase of the headphones as well as accident and damage cover and free upgrades when they become available. This should decrease the number of headphones going to landfill in favour of a newer model or if they are broken. The headphones are modular, therefore repair and replacement of individual modules is easy and prevents the entire unit from becoming defunct if one component breaks.
Although still at a concept and design stage this is a rethink and redesign of both shoe design and the supply chain surrounding children’s shoes. This concept has two design elements:
That leather offcuts from the fashion industry can be used to develop a range of children’s shoes.
These shoes are engineered for disassembly so that the valuable parts can be re-used or recycled. Therefore once they are outgrown they can be returned to the manufacturer and the parts reused wherever possible. This cuts down on the amount of virgin materials used.
Coca-Cola have launched recycling and repurposing schemes such as EKOCYCLE™, which recycles the PET bottles into goods such as mobile phone chargers, notebooks and sustainable jewelry some of which is produced by local communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/blog/circular-economy-shaping-the-future-of-consumption
Ikea runs several schemes that repurpose and reuse materials. The KUNGSBACKA kitchen front is made from 100% recycled FSC® certified wood and PET-Bottles. The KUGGIS storage box is made from recycled PET plastic bottles.
Ikea have also used glass that has been rejected due to defects and bubbles to create the IKEAPS 2017 vase, this glass has been re-melted and re-blown to create into new items. This re-use has lowered the waste and saves raw material resources.
The TÅNUM rug is made from recycled cotton from within the Ikea production process, over 90% of the cotton used was from leftover fabric from bed linin production that would have otherwise been discarded.
Looptworks is based in Portland, Oregon and aims to up-cycle or re-purpose abandoned, pre-consumer and post-consumer materials into limited edition desirable products. They use excess materials from industry – saving the material from incineration or landfill. Upcycling saves natural resources, which are limited, and cuts down on water intensive production processes – such as that of treating and tanning leather.
Looptworks have worked with Portland Trail Blazers to repurpose obsolete jerseys. Both Southwest and Alaska Airlines recently refurbished their planes, and as a result of this seat leather was redundant. Looptworks repurposed this seat leather into bags and other accessories, thus preventing the waste of still useable leather.
Levi Strauss & Co are rethinking the lifecycle of their jeans, from a liner progression to a circular economy mindset. They aim to help divert clothes from landfill via a recycling programme and instead have them re-used as insulation for buildings, cushioning material and new fibers for clothing. The overall aim is to create a closed loop system for Levi Strauss & Co products.
Works with partners including, but not limited to, H&M, M&S and The North Face to help promote recycling schemes of clothing to prevent landfill and promote sustainability and environmentally friendly lifestyle, with closed loop schemes.
They collect shoes and clothes and then sort them to either reuse or recycle in order to ensure maximum use of these valuable materials. I:CO operate in more than 60 countries
Nike Grind operates as part of the Reuse-A-Shoe campaign, a repurposing scheme for any old athletic shoes run by Nike. The shoes are repurposed into three distinct materials. Firstly, Nike Grind Rubber which is made from the outsole and is used in track surfaces, interlocking gym floor tiles and playground surfacing. Secondly, Nike Grind Foam made from the midsole, which is used as a cushion for outdoor basketball, tennis courts and fields. Thirdly, Nike Grind Fiber made from the fabric upper and used for athletic-surface padding and equestrian surfacing material. Nike Grind has been in place since the early 1990s.
iFixit was founded in Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and aims to have repair manuals and how-to guides for repairing modern technology that doesn’t come with repair guides as standard. This means that devices have a longer lifespan and stay out of landfill for longer, as consumers can repair their items for less money than it would take to replace them. https://www.ifixit.com/Info/background
The Restart Project
The Restart Project is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), which works with communities, schools, and companies to encourage people to use electronics for longer, thus extending the lifespans of the individual devices. The project attempts to prevent electronic waste when at all possible, for example by helping people to learn how to fix their own electronics, giving them more of a sense of ownership over their gadgets. https://therestartproject.org/about/
Clothing
Love Your Clothes is a campaign launched in 2014 to help change the way that UK consumers buy, use and dispose of clothing. This campaign aims to reduce the waste and environmental impact of clothing and help to influence the creation of a circular economy mindset. The Love Your Clothes website has a specific Care & Repair Section (http://loveyourclothes.org.uk/care-repair). This section includes tips for Washing, Drying and Ironing, Repair and Alterations and Stain Removal. By helping consumers fully understand the best way to care for and repair their garments they last longer. The Love Your Clothes website also has sections for Refashion & Upcycle, and what to do with Unwanted Clothes. Therefore this website, and the wider project, certainly embody many of the circular economy ideals.
Remanufacture
Dulux Community RePaint
Community RePaint is a scheme sponsored by Dulux that aims to give leftover paint a new lease of life. This eliminates waste and encourages people to think about leftover paint in a new way, rather than simply disposing of it or letting it linger in the back of cupboards. In 2015 the first paint remanufacturing plant was opened in March, Cambridgeshire – this plant processes leftover paint for community groups and families on low income.
Perkins Engines has a standard operating procedure in place in which they regularly salvage and remanufacture old parts. They return products at the end of life to an as-new condition, thereby reducing owning and operation costs, as these refurbished parts cost significantly less than a brand new part but still carry the full 12 month warranty.
There is a triple benefit all round from using remanufactured parts.
It is good for customers because Perkins remanufactured parts and components provide the same as-new performance and reliability at fraction-of-new costs—while reducing their impact on the environment.
It is good for the business because the remanufacturing programme is based on an exchange system where customers return a used component (core) in return for remanufactured products giving customers another buying choice and service option for their Perkins engine.
It is good for the environment because Perkins and its parent company recycle almost 55,000 metric tonnes of end-of-life iron annually, reducing waste and minimising the need for raw material to produce new parts. Through remanufacturing, we keep non-renewable resources in circulation for multiple lifetimes.
General manufacturing industry values for remanufactured parts indicate savings in the range of:
ThermaGroup produces remanufactured air conditioning and refrigeration units. ThermaGroup consists of ThermaCon, ThermaOzone and ThermaParts. All three areas deal with remanufacturing, with ThermaCon actually remanufacturing, ThermaOzone handling the day to day running of the remanufactured machines, and finally ThermaParts offering both new and remanufactured parts to the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) Industry.
ThermaCom has been running for 20 years and has practical and technical experience in remanufacturing Screw Compressors, Semi-Hermetic and Scroll refrigeration compressors.
Marmax Recycled Products is based in the North of England and they produce recycled plastic products. They use recycled plastic bottles to make playground equipment and outdoor furniture. They have saved an estimated 6 million plastic bottles from landfill in the first 4 months of 2017. The products created are infinitely recyclable so could potentially avoid landfill almost indefinitely. The plastic playground equipment and outdoor furniture requires less maintenance than traditional wood and other mixed material objects, therefore the recycled plastic products are more attractive to the consumer – as they provide an environmental benefit as well as a longer life span.
Renault operates in 125 countries, and sold more than 3 million vehicles in 2016. Renault has started to pursue short-loop recycling as a solution for end of life vehicles. The programme is called Innovative CAR REcycling 95% (ICARRE 95), and the ultimate goal is to become a closed loop system with materials from end of life vehicles being recycled into new vehicles at the same level as those derived from raw materials.
The Short Loop mechanism recycles raw materials such as steel, copper, and textiles. Currently 36% of a new Renault vehicle produced in Europe is from recycled materials; in addition 85% of an end of life vehicle is recyclable.
The all-new Range Rover Velar has used a revolutionary fabric to provide an alternative to leather upholstery. The new fabric is a suedecloth fabric made form recycled plastic bottles. This fabric, Dapple Grey, was developed together with Kvadrat Europe’s leading manufacturer of design textiles, and has been pitched as a sustainable premium alternative to traditional leather.
Rumi X is a fitness and wellness clothing brand that uses both plastic bottles and coffee grounds. Plastic bottles are shredded, melted and dried into flakes, which are then pulled into yarn. Rumi X also extracts oil from the grounds of used coffee, this is then used to eliminate odour without the use of high energy and temperature carbonisation. The material formed from the oil is shaped into small pellets and then used with the recycled thread to be spun into yarn.
Norton Point manufacture sunglasses made from recovered HDPE found in oceans. HDPE is used in many consumer products and over 8 million tonnes of this material enters the oceans every year. The plastic from the oceans is processed into plastic pellets that is then formed into sunglasses, with a contribution of the profit from the sale of the sunglasses being re-invested into clean ups with their partner Ocean Conservancy.
Bio-Bean was founded in 2013 to provide an industrial solution to the process of recycling waste coffee grounds into biochemical and biofuels. Bio-Bean estimate that the UK produces 500,000 tonnes of coffee grounds every year – which produce methane (a Greenhouse Gas) in landfill. http://www.bio-bean.com/about-us/
Bio-Bean makes four distinct products out of the coffee grounds – Coffee Logs (a fuel source that replaces a log or charcoal briquette in stoves, fires and chimineas), Biodiesel, Biochemicals and Biomass Pellets. http://www.bio-bean.com/products/
By operating at on multi-level basis from independent cafés to major coffee chains or instant coffee factories, Bio-Bean can make a real impact on reducing the amount of coffee grounds going to landfill. The Coffee Logs are produced in Cambridgeshire.
The Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) in Peterborough opened in March 2016 as a partnership between Viridor and Peterborough City Council. This ERF is designed to reduce the amount of black bag waste going to landfill in the Peterborough area, as it allows 85,000 tonnes of residential waste for the next 30 years to be diverted – and provides enough energy to power to equivalent of 16,000 homes as a result. This ERF is at the heart of Peterborough’s aim to be the UK’s Environment Capital, and makes a significant step towards the zero waste ambition.
The British Sugar plant at Wissington in Norfolk has tried to eliminate or minimise their waste streams. They produce twelve saleable products using waste byproducts from production including water and heat and the soil and stone removed from the sugar beet during the initial clean. This soil is sold under the Topsoil brand and the stone as aggregate.
Wissington also has a bioethanol plant, but perhaps the most important waste stream for them is CO2. This CO2 used to be used to grow tomatoes, but now is utilised to grow a plant that produces Cannabidiol, the active ingredient in Epidiolex (a new prescription epilepsy drug used predominately by children), they have recently harvested their first crop in June 2017.
In Rainham, Essex Veolia operate a Plastic Recovery Facility (PRF). The PRF allows mixed use plastic to be sorted using high tech equipment that can sort up to nine polymers and colours. Mixed plastic recycling has the potential to save over 300,000 tonnes of CO2 per year In the UK, however, currently under half of this potential is being realised due to a lack of facilities and awareness. A PRF allows a closed loop system to be established, it encourages mixed plastic recycling and it reduces carbon emissions by decreasing the amount of virgin materials used.
Opportunity Peterborough (OP) and Peterborough City Council (PCC) held a conference on 24 January 2019 to bring together practitioners in the fields of Circular Economy (CE) and Future Cities (FC), to share ideas and experience and develop the business case for circular, sustainable cities. This was an event to inspire those working in or adopting circular economy to help them learn, share, network and collaborate and develop future pathways to successful implementation. The event will strongly link to follow up events to be run by the University Centre Peterborough (UCP) in June 2019 focused on the practically based research and development on the topic. UCP’s transition to become a fully-fledged University will include a unique focus on the Circular Economy. The combined impact will reinforce the city’s position as leading the way on Circular City thinking and development.
The conference itself considered the complex topic considering two connected themes through an overarching narrative of best practice and business case development alongside the co-creation of collaborative next steps. It showcased Peterborough’s significant progress in CE and FC and how the city plans to build on this in the future in collaboration with others. The conference will also consider CE in the context of how small to medium size businesses can build innovative solutions through collaboration and will bring learning from the European Investment Partnership (EIP) Small Giants imitative to inform this element.
The event featured inspiring speakers to challenge and excite the delegates and to drive future collaborations to accelerate national and international progress towards a circular future. The presentations themselves were supplemented with interactive Q&A sessions, networking and focused workshops to ensure that all attendees gained valuable learning.
Finally, the sessions was filmed so the learning can be accessed via the Future Peterborough websites beyond the event itself and insight. Keep a lookout on this page for our video!
Conference Themes
The conference focused on two connected themes under the banner “Future Circular Cities – Making It Real”:-
A – Practical Approaches to City Scale Circular Economy — putting CE it into practice at a city scale.
B – Developing the business case, from theory to implementation including the EIP Small Giants collaboration, scale up and Industrial Strategy relevance.
We look forward to updating you with outcomes of the event and the progress of circular economy initiatives in Peterborough. To find out more about our circular city project please email: circular@opportunitypeterborough.co.uk
Opportunity Peterborough (OP) and Peterborough City Council (PCC) held a conference on 24 January 2019 to bring together practitioners in the fields of Circular Economy (CE) and Future Cities (FC), to share ideas and experience and develop the business case for circular, sustainable cities. This was an event to inspire those working in or adopting circular economy to help them learn, share, network and collaborate and develop future pathways to successful implementation. The event will strongly link to follow up events to be run by the University Centre Peterborough (UCP) in June 2019 focused on the practically based research and development on the topic. UCP’s transition to become a fully-fledged University will include a unique focus on the Circular Economy. The combined impact will reinforce the city’s position as leading the way on Circular City thinking and development.
The conference itself considered the complex topic considering two connected themes through an overarching narrative of best practice and business case development alongside the co-creation of collaborative next steps. It showcased Peterborough’s significant progress in CE and FC and how the city plans to build on this in the future in collaboration with others. The conference also considered CE in the context of how small to medium size businesses can build innovative solutions through collaboration and brought learning from the European Investment Partnership (EIP) Small Giants Initiative to inform this element.
The event featured inspiring speakers to challenge and excite the delegates and to drive future collaborations to accelerate national and international progress towards a circular future. The presentations themselves were supplemented with interactive Q&A sessions, networking and focused workshops to ensure that all attendees gained valuable learning.
Finally, the talks were filmed so the learning can be accessed via the Future Peterborough website beyond the event itself. Keep a lookout on this page for our videos!
Conference Themes
The conference focused on two connected themes under the banner “Future Circular Cities – Making It Real”:-
A – Practical Approaches to City Scale Circular Economy — putting CE it into practice at a city scale.
B – Developing the business case, from theory to implementation including the EIP Small Giants collaboration, scale up and Industrial Strategy relevance.
We look forward to updating you with outcomes of the event and the progress of circular economy initiatives in Peterborough. To find out more about our circular city project please email: circular@opportunitypeterborough.co.uk
Circular Peterborough WHAT IS IT? The Circular Peterborough programme aims to apply circular economy principles at the city level. The programme is about making the most of the resources we have locally, supporting economic resiliences,...