Increases To The Renewable Heat Budget

By Author: John Bregar
Total Articles: 27
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The government has announced that further funding is to be made available to all applicable landlords who install renewable heating equipment in their properties. The existing budget has been increased by a third, meaning that a total of £4 million has now been made available for the scheme in a push by the government to incentivise the use of renewable heating alternatives.

The news will be celebrated by both property owners and environmentally aware charities who want to see more done to encourage the use of sustainable building materials and help the government’s push towards reducing CO2 emissions.

The announcement was made by the Climate Change Minister; Greg Baker, who confirmed that the proportion of the renewable heat premium payment set aside for social landlords had gone up by a third. Mr Baker also commented on his commitment to deliver the most cost effective carbon saving solutions and insisted the Green Deal and the Feed in Tariff must be brought together as a coherent package.

With this announcement in mind we should expect to see in an increase in the use of renewable heating technology ...
... in homes, including solar thermal hot water pumps, biomass boilers and ground and air source heat pumps, which will all benefit from the new change. Housing providers will now be allocated up to £175,000 to support the installation of these renewable technologies into their properties.

Altogether the scheme is worth a total of £15 million, with as much as £4 million of that being set aside for social landlords alone. Applications closed on the 15th September and the first wave of those selected to win a share in the fund were revealed. A group of 24 social housing providers from across Great Britain were rewarded their share of the cash under the new renewable heat premium payment system.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change revealed that they had received 125 bids from social housing providers who wanted to become part of the scheme and the 24 winners will all now receive up to £175,000 to install a range of energy saving technologies which include biomass boilers, hot water Solar Panels or hot water heat pumps.

The news comes around the same time it was announced that subsidiaries available for households installing solar panels are to be cut. Homeowners discovered that all renewable technology installed after 12th December 2011 will now receive a rate of 21 pence per kilowatt-hour compared to 43.3 pence per kilowatt-hour when the Feed-In-Tariff scheme was initially launched. The scheme was intended for any property with retrofit solar technology installed with a capacity of up to 4KW.

Sustainability Market Director for Jewson, Malcolm Gough gave his reaction to the news stating; “It’s great to see that something is being done to incentivise the purchase of renewable technologies and help customers continue to save money and help preserve our environment. We have something to build on and can work in partnership with social landlords to help push the use of energy saving technologies.”