Woking a way to sustainability.
When Allan Jones became chief engineer of the Borough of Woking, England, he introduced a plan to replace the town’s electricity and heating systems with cogeneration systems as a way to improve the energy efficiency of the town.
The idea behind cogeneration is to move the energy production to the site and capture and use the heat that normally goes to waste in large power stations. It’s estimated that in Britain two-thirds of energy generated at power stations is lost to the atmosphere as heat and 50% of Britain’s water resources are used to evaporate this waste heat.
In cogeneration the captured heat is used to heat water and buildings it is even used in air-conditioning and refrigeration (trigeneration)
To supplement the cogeneration system the town also installed fuel cells and solar panels.
The result of all these changes over 14 years was that by 2004 the town of Woking was producing 80% of its own power and had droped its CO2 emissions by 77%.
Allan Jones was recently made chief executive office of the London Climate Change Agency. He will attempt to apply the lessons of Woking, population 100,000, to the City of London, population around 7 million.
The goal is to reduce London’s CO2 emissions to 60% of 1990 levels by 2025 and have a quarter of the cities energy coming from local sources.
