Results:

1. Executive Summary
2. Project Manager's Report
3. Business Case Update
4. Progress Against Budget
5. Bank account
6. Successful Delivery Reward Criteria (SDRC)
7. Learning Outcomes
8. Intellectual Property Right (IPR)
9. Risk Management
10. Consistency With Full Submission

UKERC have submitted a response to the BEIS call for evidence on the future for small-scale low-carbon generation. This consultation sought to identify the role that small-scale low-carbon generation can play in the UK shift to clean growth by further understanding:

• The challenges and opportunities from small-scale low-carbon generation in contributing to government's objectives for clean, secure, affordable and flexible power; and
• The role for government and the private sector in overcoming these challenges and realising these opportunities.

In our submission we responded to the individual points raised in the call, drawing on two streams of work undertaken as part of the UKERC research programme. The first stream concerns community energy, drawing primarily on data from the UKERC Financing Community Energy project. This project has collected and analysed data from a number of sources:

• Quantitative data gathered as part of a UK-wide survey of community energy finance and business models. This dataset covers 145 community energy projects run by 48 different community energy organisations.
• Qualitative data on community energy organisations' suggestions for changes in public policy and industry practice, and their plans for the future, gathered as part of the same UK-wide survey.
• Further qualitative data on community energy organisations' views on pathways to future decentralised energy business models, gathered at workshops held as part of the Manchester Mayor's Green Summit process, and the Community Energy England annual conference 2018.
• A wide range of other data and literature, including access to the dataset collected for Community Energy England's 2017 State of the Sector Survey, covering 220 community energy organisations in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The second stream draws on a number of recent UKERC publications on electricity systems and networks :

• Developing low carbon networks for a low-carbon future
• Security of electricity supply in a low-carbon Britain
• The Costs and Impacts of Intermittency
• Delivering a highly distributed electricity system: Technical, regulatory and policy challenges.

This document is the final report for the project titled 'Barriers to Commissioning Renewable Energy Projects'.

In June 2005 Land Use Consultants, in association with IT Power, were commissioned by Future Energy Solutions on behalf of the Renewables Advisory Board (RAB) to undertake research into factors delaying the commissioning of renewable energy projects in the post-planning approval phase. The research will inform future policy and practice necessary to meet the Government's target of 10% of our electricity needs from renewable sources by 2010.

The research focuses on barriers to commissioning onshore wind projects, given the potential for this resource to contribute to meeting the 2010 target. It also addresses offshore wind, biomass and hydro projects.

As per the brief set for the research, the methodology centred on statistical analysis to understand the extent of delays, and consultation with industry representatives to understand the causes of these delays. Twenty-four renewable energy developers and related organisations and eight financial institutions contributed to the research either by returning questionnaires or taking part in telephone interviews or focus groups, during the period June to September 2005. Questionnaire returns represent 58% of total approved megawatts (MW) of renewable energy capacity.

1. Introduction
2. Objectives and methodology
3. Delays in the post-planning period: the scale of the problem
4. Factors delaying commissioning of onshore wind schemes
5. Factors delaying commissioning of offshore wind schemes
6. Factors delaying commissioning of hydro schemes
7. Factors delaying commissioning of biomass schemes
8. Investor feedback summary
9. Future trends & prospects
10. Recommendations

This briefing paper examines how renewables in Scotland are shaped by decisions taken by the Scottish Government, the UK Government and the EU. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders, it explores the potential impact of Brexit on Scottish renewables.

Brexit has the potential to disrupt this relatively supportive policy environment in three ways in regulatory and policy frameworks governing renewable energy; access to EU funding streams; and trade in energy and related goods and services.

Our briefing identifies varying levels of concern among key stakeholders in Scotland. Many expect policy continuity, irrespective of the future UK-EU relationship. There is more concern about access to research and project funding, and future research and development collaboration, especially for more innovative renewable technologies. The UK will become a third country forthe purposes of EU funding streams, able to participate, but not lead on renewables projects, and there is scepticism about whether lost EU funding streams will be replaced at domestic levels.

While there is no real risk of being unable to access European markets even in a No-Deal Brexit scenario, trade in both energy and related products and services could become more difficult and more expensive affecting both the import of specialist labour and kit from the EU and the export of knowledge-based services. Scotlands attractiveness for inward investment may also be affected.

Commencing in 2016, the Financing Community Energy project provides a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the role of finance in the evolution of the UK community energy sector. This report presents the second of four case studies of UK community energy organisations, exploring how these organisations have sought to finance their projects against a backdrop of diminishing government support for grassroots sustainable development.

Green Energy Mull (GEM) is a Community Benefit Company (BenCom) that owns and operates Garmony Hydro; a 400 kW run-of-the-river hydro scheme on the island of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister ('the ODPM') has commissioned this research into Planning for Renewable Energy as part of its New Horizons research programme. The New Horizons programme aims to introduce new research ideas, develop innovative, cross-cutting approaches to research and offer a forward-thinking perspective on medium- to long-term policy issues pertaining to the ODPM.

The specific objectives of the Planning for Renewable Energy research have been:

The research programme was devised in May 2002 and the research was conducted over the course of eleven months, commencing in October 2002.

The research is especially timely because the results are able to inform the revision of Planning Policy Guidance 22 (renewable energy) and the accompanying documentation for the new Planning Policy Statement 22 (renewable energy). The research has also been able to take account of the Energy White Paper, Our Energy Future, Creating a Low Carbon Economy (2003) and The Sustainable communities Plan (2003), both of which were published during the course of the project.

Perhaps the single most important concluding remark for ODPM is to point out that its extensive responsibilities for the built environment mean that it cannot avoid a significant role in the development of policies on renewables over the course of the next five to ten years. Indeed, given the potentially vital role of the linkages between planning, regeneration and governance, and the ODPM's responsibilities across these areas, the Department could reasonably be considered to be the most important in helping the country to become a low carbon economy

1. Introduction
2. Context of the research
3. The planning system and renewable energy
4. Community renewables and urban regeneration
5. Governance of renewable energy
6. Final conclusions and recommendations

Against a policy background set principally by the Energy White Paper 2003 and the Sustainable Communities Plan 2003, Brook Lyndhurst's research work on "Planning for Renewable Energy" approached the issue of renewable energy from three perspectives:

The particular objectives of the research were:

Our research suggests that the issue(s) of renewable energy is, in general, restricted to a small but enthusiastic minority of players in regional and local government. For the mainstream practitioner in land-use planning and urban regeneration, energy issues generally, and renewable energy issues in particular, have a low priority.

Those practitioners with responsibility for renewables, while making some headway in forging links with regional planners, appear to operate discretely from regeneration practitioners at all levels and planners at the local level. As a result, no "critical mass" of concern has come about, so there has been no significant impetus for the development of a "community of interest" encompassing planning, regeneration and renewable energy personnel, at both regional and local levels.

In the longer term, however, it would seem that if the UK is to achieve truly dramatic reductions in its emissions of carbon dioxide (as envisaged, most obviously, by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution), then a more radical and far-reaching programme of change will be required.

It argues that, since its emergence in the UK in the late 1990s, community energy has grown through finding opportunities for smaller scale, decentralised energy activities in the UKs highly centralised energy system. The combination of development of renewable energy technologies, and the launch of the governments Feed-In Tariff Scheme (FITS) in 2010, produced a boom in the sector, especially around solar electricity generation.

Recent cuts to FITS rates and other policy changes place community energy at a crossroads. Some renewables activity will continue, but groups are exploring a wide range of activities, partnerships, and business models. We are engaging with the sector around outputs from our research, which include a survey and case studies, to co-develop recommendations and pathways for the future.

This UKERC Research Landscape provides an overview of the competencies and publicly funded activities in hydropower research, development and demonstration (RD&D) in the UK. It covers the main funding streams, research providers, infrastructure, networks and UK participation in international activities.

UKERC ENERGY RESEARCH LANDSCAPE: HYDROPOWER

• Section 1: An overview which includes a broad characterisation of research activity in the sector and the key research challenges
• Section 2: An assessment of UK capabilities in relation to wider international activities, in the context of market potential
• Section 3: Major funding streams and providers of basic research along with a brief commentary
• Section 4: Major funding streams and providers of applied research along with a brief commentary
• Section 5: Major funding streams for demonstration activity along with major projects and a brief commentary
• Section 6: Research infrastructure and other major research assets (e.g. databases, models)
• Section 7: Research networks, mainly in the UK, but also European networks not covered by the EU Framework Research and Technology Development (RTD) Programmes
• Section 8: UK participation in energy-related EU Framework Research and Technology Development (RTD) Programmes
• Section 9: UK participation in wider international initiatives, including those supported by the International Energy Agency

The UK Energy Research Centre welcomes this opportunity to provide input to the BERR Consultation on the UK Renewable Energy Strategy. We have addressed a number of the questions posed in the consultation document calling on all UKERC members for input.

To meet the EU 15% renewable energy target will be a significant challenge for the UK. It is important to understand that reductions in the UKs total energy demand will produce proportional reductions in the renewable contribution required. Although self-evident, this simple fact is often overlooked. Indeed the UK has to date failed to achieve any reductions in energy use, in fact the reverse is true: energy consumption in the key sectors of electricity and energy for transport continues to rise steadily.

In addition to reducing the demand for energy, there will need to be a massive increase in the contribution of renewables to transport fuel (predominately biofuels), heat and electricity. This submission concentrates on renewable electricity because UKERC has core competency this area. In Table 1, below, UKERC presents an illustrative scenario for the contribution of renew

• Without the adoption of a more holistic approach that addresses BETTA structural reform and network regulation, it is difficult to see how a satisfactory resolution of the transmission access issue can be achieved.
• It is proposed that more strategic and unified development of the onshore and offshore network together with the provision of interconnection would be encouraged through common or at least zonal ownership of offshore transmission assets, while cost-effectiveness and the efficient delivery of assets could be achieved through tendering and outsourcing construction.
• Modern distribution networks are not typically designed to accommodate generation; a number of technical and operational challenges will need to be addressed in order for the connection of significant amounts of distributed generation on these networks.
• The consequences of intermittency or variability of input will need to be managed by a combination of retaining conventional plant and developing demand response. Additionally, interconnection with adjacent transmission systems and improved forecasting of wind resource and maintaining geographic diversity of wind generation could also reduce the impacts of intermittency.
• The role of smart grids will be to enhance the capacity and utilisation of the electricity grid (both transmission and distribution) by means other than investing in traditional transmission assets and, via the deployment of smart metering, massively increase the contribution of the demand side to system security and the decarbonisation of the heat and transport sectors.
• UKERC is concerned that a major opportunity will be missed unless there is a timely change to a regulatory regime that encourages objective and costefficient choices between investment and smart grid solutions.

We welcome the Welsh Government's interest in locally owned renewable energy. Our response draws on a range of research undertaken by the Heat and the City research group at the University of Edinburgh, including a UK-wide study of local authorities and energy; and on the Financing Community Energy research project being led by Tyndall Manchester.

In our response we made the following general comments, before responding to individual points raised in the call:

• We suggest that greater attention should be paid to city/town/settlement scale infrastructure for a low carbon energy system, including area based upgrading of the built environment and low carbon heating infrastructure. Heat and energy efficiency for a low energy building stock are crucial to meeting Welsh and UK Government legally binding targets for carbon abatement.
• At national scale, Wales has opportunities for sharing risk, costs and benefits of energy developments - i.e. the direct benefit to the citizens of Wales through public ownership and the aggregate costs across society of decarbonisation.
• Local Authority planning and ownership could be considered further as key components to securing greater local control and accountability, and achieving Welsh Government objectives. Our research indicates that further developing specific roles, powers, resources and responsibilities of local institutional actors in energy planning and ownership, especially Local Authorities would also add value to Welsh society and economy.