New technologies glossary

Bio-energy
Biomass is derived from plant material and animal residues/wastes. It can be used to generate electricity and/or heat, and to produce transport fuel. This energy is called bio-energy. There’s a load of ‘biomass’ that can be used for energy purposes eg straw and crop residues, crops specially grown for energy production – willow, oil seed rape and wastes from a range of sources including food production. The nature of the fuel will determine the way that energy can best be recovered from it.

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂)
Carbon dioxide contributes around 60% of the potential global warming effect of human-made emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide. Not surprising then, that it’s global enemy no.1. The burning of so called fossil fuels-oil, gas, coal - releases CO₂ and increases its concentration in the atmosphere.

Carbon Trust
This is an independent, not-for-profit company set up by Government with support from businesses to encourage and promote the development of low carbon technologies. Its key role is to support British Business in reducing carbon emissions through funding, support of technological innovation and by encouraging more efficient working practices.

Visit the Carbon Trust’s website

Combined cycle gas turbines
These use both gas and steam turbine cycles in a single plant to produce electricity with high conversion efficiencies and relatively low emissions.

Combined heat and power (CHP)
CHP is the simultaneous generation of useable heat and power in a single process, thereby discarding less waste than conventional generation.

Condensing boiler
The term ‘condensing boiler’ refers to the fact that the boilers produce condense from time to time.

Condensing boilers use heat from exhaust gases that would normally be released into the atmosphere through the flue. To use this latent heat, the water vapour from the exhaust gas is turned into liquid condensate.

In order to make the most of the latent heat within the condensate, condensing boilers use a larger heat exchanger, or sometimes a secondary heat exchanger.

Due to this process, a condensing boiler is able to extract more heat from the fuel it uses than a standard efficiency boiler. It also means that less heat is lost through the flue gases.

View Worcester’s condensing boilers

Decent Homes Standard
This has been set by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and the Decent Homes Standard is a minimum standard that all social housing in England should achieve by 2010. A decent home is ‘wind and weather tight, warm and has modern facilities’.

Energy Saving Trust (EST)
The EST is a not-for-profit organisation set up and largely funded by Government to manage a number of programmes to improve energy efficiency, particularly in the domestic sector.

Visit the Energy Saving Trust website

Fuel Cells
Fuel cells produce electricity from hydrogen and air, with water as the only emission. Potential applications include stationary power generation, transport (replacing the internal combustion engine) and portable power (replacing batteries).

Fuel poverty
The common definition of a ‘fuel poor’ household is one needing to spend in excess of 10% of household income to achieve a satisfactory heating regime ( 21°C in the living room and 18°C in other occupied rooms)

National Energy Action (NEA) is the leading fuel poverty and energy efficiency charity.

Visit the NEA website

Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is one that contributes to global warming. The most significant greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP)
Ground source heat pumps do exactly what they say they do – they extract heat from the ground – either by circulating water (or another fluid) through pipes buried in the ground in trenches, or in vertical boreholes. The pipes extract heat from the ground and a heat exchanger within the pump, extracts the heat from this fluid. The compression cycle is employed (also used in refrigerators) to then raise the temperature to supply hot water to the building.

View Worcester’s ground source heat pumps

Heat pumps
These work like a refrigerator moving heat from one place to another. Heat pumps can provide space heating, cooling, water heating and sometimes exhaust air heat recovery.

Heat recovery
A technique for maximising efficiency by making use of heat that would otherwise be wasted, eg in hot exhaust gases.

Micro-CHP
CHP at the scale of a single dwelling, used in place of a domestic central heating boiler.

Photovoltaics (PV)
This is the direct conversion of solar radiation - sunlight - into electricity by the interaction of light with the electrons in a semi-conductor device or cell.

Renewable energy
Energy flows that occur naturally and repeatedly in the environment. This includes solar power, wind, wave and tidal power and hydroelectricity. Solid renewable energy sources include energy crops and other biomass. Gaseous renewables come from landfill and sewage waste.

View Worcester’s renewable energy products

Renewables Obligation (RO)
This is the obligation placed on electricity suppliers to deliver a stated proportion of their electricity from eligible renewable energy sources.

Solar thermal/solar hot water
A system for using solar radiation to heat water, typically roof-mounted panels connected with pipes to a storage tank. Worcester’s Greenskies product is a solar thermal system.

View Worcester’s solar water heating products

Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP)
The SAP is the Government’s recommended system for energy rating of dwellings. It is used for calculating the SAP rating, on a scale of 1-100, based on the annual energy costs for space and water heating; and for calculating the Carbon Index, on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0, based on the annual CO₂ emissions associated with space and water heating.

Sustainable Development Commission
The Commission’s main role is to advocate sustainable development across all sectors in the UK, review progress towards it and build consensus on the actions needed if further progress is to be achieved.

Units of Energy
Energy is the ability to do work. 1 Watt hour (Wh) is the amount of energy used by a 1W device operating for an hour. A kilowatt-hour is 1,000Wh and a megawatt-hour is 1,000,000Wh.