To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what estimate he has made of the proportion of heat derived from renewable sources (a) generated and (b) consumed by each industrial sector in each year since 2005. (282272)

[holding answer 29 June 2009]: The Government collect statistics on renewable heat generation in total (c.f. Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) 2008, table 7.6 “renewable sources used to generate electricity and heat and for transport fuels”) but these figures are not broken down across industrial sectors. This table shows that the total amount of renewable heat generated across the UK economy was 8.48 TWh in 2007 (most recent year available), 7.51 TWh in 2006 and 6.97 TWh in 2005.

Renewable heat is also produced by combined heat and power (CHP) plants that use renewable fuels, and the data on these—on a whole-economy basis—are presented in table 6.6 of DUKES. This shows that in 2007 out of a total of 53,050 GWh of heat generated by CHP plants in the UK 992 GWh came from those using renewable fuels i.e. almost 2 per cent. A significant percentage of these plants will be within the industrial sector.

The September 2008 edition of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s ‘Energy Trends’ publication had a special feature “Estimates of Heat Use in the UK” focusing on 2006. The figure for heat consumption by manufacturing industry¹ for that year was given (table 4) as 216 TWh [or 18,577 ktoe²], and it was noted that this did not include ‘2.3 TWh [198 ktoe] of renewable fuels (predominantly used for renewable heat)’. This would equate (assuming 100 per cent. heat use) to around 1.0 per cent. of total heat demand for this sector being met from renewable sources.

¹ The definition of manufacturing industry used did not include mining and quarrying, recycling, the collection, purification and distribution of water, and construction.

² Kilotonnes of oil equivalent. DUKES uses this unit; 1 tonne oil equivalent = 11.63 MWh.