Calor claim their new fuel cell house boiler beats ‘expensive renewables’
A new kind of domestic fuel cell boiler powered by liquefied petroleum gas, is being developed by Calor and Ceres Power, and is aimed at the two million rural households currently off the mains gas grid. Calor claim it offers a radical alternative to the Government’s expensive and controversial renewable energy measures.
The new boiler is designed to cut by 50 per cent a year carbon dioxide emissions at the average domestic house using heating oil.
Details of the new approach were released amid opinion polling suggesting that the public is reluctant to make major financial sacrifices to address climate change. Under current plans, Ministers plan to impose extra costs on consumers to fund a switch to energy sources such as biomass (wood chip boilers) and wind turbines.
The fuel cell boiler developers believe that higher electricity, gas and heating oil prices will be used to subsidise a switch to biomass and wind – the officially preferred technologies for hitting the Government’s target of reducing carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020. Ministers are committed to raising the renewable element in energy generation from 1.5 per cent today to 15 per cent by 2020.
The developers say the new British boilers, to be launched on LPG in 2012, will also generate up to 80 per cent of the electricity required at the average property, and that they will cost around £5000 – far less than the £14,000 cost of installing a wood chip boiler.
British Gas is developing a similar system to be used by families on mains gas, and this will hit the market in 2011.
