And now, yesterday, I find that the Borough of Islington has joined the fun with the Bunhill energy centre and heat network located behind Old Street's St. Luke's church. Not quite the same thing, as it is into heat pumps, waste heat capture (from, for example, near by tube lines) and local heat networks rather than digesting, but it all sounds very up-to-date and very ecological.
Note the environmentally sourced green oak cladding to the chimney.
Presumably the Borough of Epsom and Ewell is into something of the sort with its collection of food waste, although I imagine in their case the serious work is done by a contractor. A modest amount of poking around does not come up with a clear answer, but the company at reference 2 may be part of the answer. Maybe their Chertsey facility, a little to the southwest of the M3/M25 interchange. With the tricky question being whether a big solution of this sort is better for the environment that the little solution at Bunhill. For a start, I don't suppose that Agrivert, sited well out of sight of any marauding ecotwits, is into environmentally sourced green oak cladding.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/osborne-revisited.html.
Reference 2: http://www.agrivert.co.uk/.
There was a piece in yesterday's Evening Standard (31/3) about these area heating schemes. Not all sweetness and light. High start up costs. High running costs. Too much insulation for comfort. Lack of choice of supplier. Lack of service from supplier. The upsides had seemed to be the reduction in heating needs in well insulated modern flats & houses (which could then go on to use the established energy grids) and cheap heat from heat pumps and such like. But there are clearly downsides as well - not least the loss of economies of scale and the sort of services that large energy companies can offer. Is it all any more than the eco-fad of the decade? Is small always cuddly?
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