Microgeneration

Rising energy prices, concerns over security of supply and government policies on climate change are key drivers for the Lark Energy business.

In the Larkfleet Group's core development business, the Code for Sustainable Homes requires a sharp focus on developing more energy efficient buildings and lower carbon energy sources for heat and power. The Group has a leading reputation for its innovative work in these areas and has won many regional and national awards.

Although the Code for Sustainable Homes focuses on new buildings, a much bigger and more important challenge, from the point of view of reducing carbon emissions, comes from the UK’s existing building stock. To reduce carbon emissions from existing stock requires the retrofitting of energy efficiency measures and renewable technologies and the Larkfleet Group is also at the forefront of this work - see the retrofit section of this website.

In the past retrofit initiatives have relied on grants and loans but this approach is being phased out in favour of market incentives such as the Feed in Tariff, introduced on 1st April 2010, and the forthcoming Renewable Heat Incentive. The Feed in Tariff presents incentives for a wide range of microgeneration technologies, with different tariff levels according to the technology and size of installation. The highest level of incentive is provided for retrofit PV under 4 kW with high levels also provided for smaller scale wind.

Lark Energy focuses on larger scale commercial installations of PV and AD, whilst Group company Larkfleet Homes focuses on new build renewables and retrofit to local authority and housing association stock.