The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is the first government funded scheme of its type in the world, in the sense that it is the first long-term financial support programme for renewable heat. It’s an incentive from the government which is designed to reward people who use renewable energy to heat their buildings. This scheme was put in place to attempt to help us reach our goal of around 12% of heating coming from renewable energies.
- There are two phases of the scheme for this incentive: The first phase is for the non-domestic sector; the industrial, commercial, public sector and community organisations.AND
- One which is for residential dwellings. This one is expected to go live in 2014. The Renewable Heat Incentive will offer regular tariff payments for 7 years to people who choose to use certain technologies to heat their homes with. The amount of money which is paid depends on what technology is used to heat their homes, such as solar thermal water heating panels, heat pumps and biomass boilers (which use wood pellets, chips or logs).
Some of the technology which is eligible includes:
- Air to water heat pumps.
- Biomass – only boilers and biomass pellet stoves with back boilers.
- Ground and water source heat pumps.
- Flat plate and evacuated tube solar thermal panels.
The RHI is similar to the Feed-In Tariffs, which is a financial support scheme for people who create their own electricity. However, there are some massive differences between the two including:
- This will be paid for by the Treasury rather than energy users.
- There is no ‘National Grid for Heat’ so importing and exporting heat is irrelevant.
- It will be introduced in phases, residential schemes will not be eligible until Phase 2, in 2014.
Written by Jade Turney – Building Tectonics.