Details of the successful schemes for the second round of funding from the Homes and Communities Agency’s (HCA) low carbon infrastructure initiative, totalling £8.80m, were announced today.

The initiative, a partnership with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and Communities and Local Government (CLG), will provide funding for schemes across the country to benefit from new and existing low carbon energy plants by creating the infrastructure needed to link them up.

Vital Energi's unique experience and knowledge and has been a key contrubutor to the entire Low Carbon Infrastructure initiative - providing the HCA with advice and insight on current market conditions and future low carbon initiatives. Head of Environmental Policy, Jane Forshaw comments:

"The Homes and Communities Agency has been running a low carbon infrastructure process and Vital Energi has given enormous support by providing imagination coupled with practicality. Their work is helping to drive forward cost effective solutions to low carbon heat and power at scale. We all need to work hard at ensuring infrastructure for future house buidling delivers the optimum outcome in terms of reduced carbon and reduced fuel bills for customers"

The successful bidders for the second round of the national housing and regeneration agency’s initiative, are:

• Hackney, London - £0.5m to install pipework to retrofit CHP energy to three high density housing estates. The funding will help provide risers in the high rise blocks and interface units in the homes.
• Greenwich, London - £3m for a number of schemes that will eventually deliver 10,000 homes. The funding will make provision to connect the homes to a London wide heat network, provide two heat spines for CHP energy and will support the construction of an energy centre.
• Rowner, Gosport - £1.12m to connect 700 new homes, of which 40 per cent will be affordable, to a CHP plant.
• Hanham Hall, South Gloucestershire - £0.8m to extend planned onsite biomass CHP plant that will power 195 zero carbon homes and take waste heat for use in neighbouring secondary school.
• Manton and Reynolds Towers, Birmingham - £0.78m to connect two thirteen storey tower blocks to a new biomass energy system at the nearby Holte School. There is also potential for some of the funding to be used alongside PFI funding to connect planned new housing in the area to the system.
• Wood End, Henley Green and Manor Farm (WEHM) estates, Coventry - £1.6m to help develop a community energy scheme using ground source heat pump technology that will provide heating and hot water for 154 homes, the first phase of a scheme that is ultimately planned to include a district CHP plant to power the whole neighbourhood.
• Yarn Street, Aire Valley in Leeds - £1m to provide a new heat network supplying CHP energy from waste plant and micro-technologies to power 280 new homes that will form part of the urban eco settlement vision for the area.

Sir Bob Kerslake, chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency, said: “Together with nearly £12m we allocated to low carbon infrastructure schemes in July, this funding will help ensure that more people have access to energy that is both less harmful to the environment than traditional sources and lower cost for them.

“The range of projects we have been able to allocate money to shows there is a real appetite for this kind of infrastructure and the benefits it brings to communities and the industry as a whole. We look forward to using the lessons we learn from these innovative projects in our future work at the HCA, to help create and support sustainable places around the country.”

Housing Minister John Healey said: “Homes account for a quarter of carbon emission so reducing this is a major part of our efforts to tackle climate change.  By making all new homes zero carbon from 2016 we are already leading the way to a much greener housing stock, and lower energy bills for residents.  But we also have to make existing homes greener, and this funding will help both new and existing developments to access clean energy sources.” 

Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt said: “This latest round of funding will make it possible for thousands more people to keep warm in their homes whilst reducing energy bills and carbon emissions. Community heating schemes are an excellent example of how we can work together to tackle climate change.” 

With more than a quarter of Britain’s carbon emissions produced from homes, the announcement are a major step towards meeting the Government’s green policy pledges and Britain’s transition to a low carbon country.