Back in 2006, when a fresh-faced David Cameron stuck a wind turbine on his west London house, it was met with derision. Reports in the press led on the ludicrous amount of time it would take the instrument to pay for itself (some quoted 40 years) while satirists suggested the small ‘windmill' could be driven entirely from the hot air from Cameron's own speeches. It was all a bit of a joke.
But four years on, the government suddenly wants us to take the joke seriously. More than that, it wants homeowners and businesses to join in, buy their own turbines and solar panels, and begin the process of generating their own renewable power. And it is willing to pay them for the trouble.
The feed-in tariff scheme, or Clean Energy Cashback as the government calls it, opens on 1 April and will reward businesses and homeowners who install their own renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels. This reward comes in three guises: a generation tariff, where you receive a fixed payment from your electricity supplier for every unit of power you generate for a period of 20 years (25 years if you are using solar photovoltaic (PV) panels); an export tariff, where you will get a guaranteed minimum payment of 3p per kWh for the energy you divert back into the national gird; and lastly, the money saved from reduced electricity bills.
Struggling in the fall-out of recession, the possibility of such a windfall is a welcome surprise. However, Mike Cheshire, of renewable energy supplier Ecotricity, warns that visions of supplying your local community with green power from a roof-top turbine are pretty wide of the mark, although he adds that the smaller contributions that can be made are still notable.
Realistic ambitions
"Feed-in tariffs could be an excellent way for print firms to create their own clean, green electricity," says Cheshire. "However, the likelihood of a print company being able to produce enough electricity for both their own use and to sell back to the grid is quite small. To generate that much electricity you would need a lot of space for the kit and a large amount of cash to purchase it. That said, you can reduce your bills and generate enough electricity to make a positive financial impact on your company, and help the environment a bit as well."
It is the size of this financial impact where, for the print industry at least, self-generated renewable power and the feed-in tariffs begin to unravel. Print is a high energy usage industry, with presses needing a great deal of power to run. According to Heidelberg, its XL 105-6+L press would typically use 138kWh of power. Ryobi says its five-colour 750 Series B2 press run with NoWatt Energy Management software uses around 39kWh.
Set this against the fact that, according to information from the American Wind Energy Association, a wind turbine with a 17m rotor has the capacity for a maximum of 100kWh of power and one with a 27m rotor has the capacity for a maximum of 225kWh per year, and you begin to see the problem. To make things worse, these maximums are only achievable if the average wind speed is at a constant 15m per second, which is unlikely outside of a wind tunnel.
Power failure
So if you have a couple of Heidelbergs and a Ryobi 750 in your arsenal, you would need enough space and money for some very big turbines and have a factory situated in a very windy location. Most printers in the UK have none of the above.
"We would love to be able to do it if we had the space," admits David Pealing, sales director at Severnprint. "Unfortunately, in terms of wind power, we are not in an especially windy spot and our site is too small to facilitate a free-standing, self-supporting wind turbine."
Rob Norwell, UK environmental and compliance manager at logistics specialist Stralfors, cites similar problems. As part of the company's commitment to environmental practice, it researched a number of renewable energy options and found wind power just wasn't efficient enough to warrant the large investment.
"We looked at wind turbines on the basis that Cornwall is an extremely windy part of the country and is far less built-up than elsewhere. We looked at the cost of a single turbine, which was around £45,000 and then we compared this to the amount of energy it would actually generate, which would have been 2.5%-3% of our energy usage per year. This would have saved us around £3,800-£4,100 a year. At that energy generation, it would have taken 12 years to pay for itself. That is not viable."
Perhaps the limitations of wind power on the small scale is the reason why the feed-in tariffs give greater emphasis to solar panels. Using solar PV cells wins you an extra five years of tariff payments compared to any other renewable energy source. Mike Cheshire explains: "The scheme is likely to be most beneficial to those installing solar panels, which can generate a better rate of return than, say, mini windmills, in built-up urban areas."
It is certainly something Severnprint has thought about. Pealing reveals: "We looked at refitting our offices and incorporating solar PV. As we are such a high user of electricity, we would never be able to generate enough electricity to power the entire site, but we could at least power the offices. It is definitely something we are considering."
However, at Stralfors they got the calculator back out and found that, like wind power, the return on investment for solar PV was just not a viable business proposition. Norwell says the shortest ROI they could get was 10.4 years. Uckfield-based Pureprint Group found the same problem.
"The performance of photovoltaic cells is improving fast, but pay-back periods are still too long," explains Richard Owers, Pureprint Group director. "We believe technological change is improving these products, so for us, watch and wait is the right approach."
Admittedly, these calculations do not take into consideration the feed-in tariffs, which should reduce the ROI time. If we ignore the export tariff, as the likelihood of a printer finding excess power to sell back to the grid is nil for reasons already explained, the generation tariff is where money can be made. The numerical value of this tariff depends on the size of the generator, but for the mini wind turbines and solar panels printers would probably install, the return is going to be up to 34p and 41p per kWh respectively.
Pealing thinks this will change how a renewable investment is perceived. "The economics have now been transformed by the tariff's introduction. They provide a fantastic opportunity for a company with the space to accommodate renewables to push forward their plans."
Cheshire agrees: "If you can afford the kit, you should see genuine financial benefits. That said, exactly how much money can be generated by a company won't be known properly until the scheme is fully up and running."
Norwell, though, is more guarded. "To make us invest, two things would need to be addressed: the up-front expenditure, which will be very difficult for most organisations to bear; and how the renewable energy you produce will be reimbursed - we need pay-back over a shorter period of time. In tough financial times, I'm not sure how either of these aspects will be rectified."
And that is the key point. Money is tight at the moment and printers are struggling to fund investments in essential print kit, nevermind a turbine that will make a minor impact on their costs. The feed-in tarrif aims to help, but it is not significant enough to speed up the ROI in a meaningful way and until this issue is addressed, it is likely the majority of printers will leave the wind turbines to Cameron and his chums and instead focus on keeping their business going.
CASE STUDY
Though UK printers may be apprehensive, in the US a printer in New Haven, Connecticut has bitten the bullet and pushed ahead with the installation of a wind turbine.
Phoenix Press erected the 150ft windmill at the end of February and calculates that it will provide a third of the company’s electricity power. The turbine cost around $500,000 (£330,000), but the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund put up half the cash.
The printer’s half was financed with a bank loan and it hopes it will receive help to pay off the loan from the federal government, which provides stimulus grants to clean energy projects.
The commercial printer’s energy costs currently top $100,000 per year and owner Brian Driscoll reckons around $35,000 of this will be knocked off thanks to the wind turbine.
Driscoll believes the use of wind power sets his company apart from its rivals, as well as having a positive influence on the firm’s bottom line.
If the project is successful, and the finance is available, then the company has left enough room to install a second turbine on the site.
