Home heat incentive scheme ‘must go on’

RHI is designed to encourage the take-up of renewable technologies

The renewable energy industry has warned the government against cancelling or changing a scheme that will pay consumers to generate their own heat.

The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)  is due to begin next April and is designed to encourage the take-up of technologies such as combined heat and power boilers, ground source heat pumps, and solar panels. 

In a similar way to the electricity feed-in tariff, the RHI will reward customers who install these renewable technologies, paying them for the hot water and heat they produce.

The scheme has been criticised by major users of electricity and it is still unclear how it will be funded. There is no clear mechanism to generate revenue to pay for the incentive.

The Renewable Energy Association (REA) is worried that the scheme could be watered down.

“Heat accounts for 47% of energy emissions and 49% of energy demand in the UK,” it said. “We urgently need the scheme to start. If you don’t meet the 2015 targets you have to go to power or transport to reduce emissions, which will be more expensive than heat. There is no economy in watering down the legislation.”

Meanwhile, the latest figures for the electricity feed-in tariff show interest in the scheme is rapidly growing. 

Almost 4,000 installations were commissioned in August at 11.28MW of capacity, more than double the 1,839 installations and 5.5MW of capacity in July.