“Inexcusable” RHI amendments make uptake a “pipedream”

Last month’s changes to the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) have been criticised by one of the companies hoping to install the renewable technologies in our homes. The decision by […]

Last month’s changes to the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) have been criticised by one of the companies hoping to install the renewable technologies in our homes. The decision by DECC delays the scheme being open to the domestic market until next year.

Harry Shepherd-Cross, director of Ardenham Energy said the Government was too concerned with its budget: “The delays to the RHI in the domestic market are inexcusable. DECC is still caught up with the aftermath of the Feed-in Tariffs debacle and its obsession with cost control via an arbitrary ‘budget’ and this is distracting away from the work needed to get the scheme fully operational.”

The incentive is meant to help accelerate deployment by providing cash to install renewable heating in place of fossil fuels. However Mr Shepherd-Cross said the low numbers of installed technology proved the scheme wasn’t working.

He said: “The Government’s ambition to have 1.2 million heat pumps installed by 2020 is a pipedream without the RHI. So far we only have 28,000 so we need to install more than five times this cumulative total per annum to hit their target.”

Last month Climate Change Minister Greg Barker amended the scheme so that for the first phase, support will go towards large emitters in the non-domestic sector. He insisted the support mechanism would be enough to kick-start momentum.

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