There has been a decrease in the uptake of the government scheme which provides support for low carbon heating technologies.

DECC published the quarterly figures for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) yesterday, which shows a 39% fall in business applications compared to the fourth quarter of 2014.

It states: “This decrease was largely due to a lower number of applications being received for small biomass boilers in March than three months earlier in December, likely due to the lower small biomass tariff on offer.”

A total of 1,568 businesses joined the scheme during the first quarter of this year.

The RHI pays householders and businesses that generate and use renewable energy to heat their buildings.

The paper shows there were a total of 8,913 non-domestic applications since the launch in November 2011 but only 7,675 of these received payments.

In total, 2,818 GWh of heat has been generated and paid for under the non-domestic RHI scheme, 93% of which has come from biomass installations.

Domestic

The report shows more than 36,000 households joined the scheme and 30,695 have been accredited.

Up until March, 42% were for air source heat pumps, 19% for solar thermal, 26% for biomass boilers and ground source heat pumps accounted for 14%.

More than 9,000 were for new installations since April 2014.