Renewable heat installations warm up with Government incentives

Including ‘legacy applicants’ – those who installed a renewable heating system after July 2009 and before April 2014 – more than 20,000 domestic installations have benefited from the RHI.

A breakdown of the figures, released on Thursday, showed that the Domestic RHI is mainly being used by homeowners but 8% of all accreditations were to social landlords.

Commenting on the figures, Renewable Energy Association (REA) head of policy Paul Thompson said: “The REA welcomes the latest statistics for Domestic RHI accreditations which show that there is huge demand for affordable and low-carbon heating in UK households.

“It is encouraging to see that not only has the 20,000 accreditations milestone been reached but the rate of uptake is rapidly increasing. This is hopefully a trend that will continue”.

DECC statistics show that three-quarters of domestic RHI installations are displacing fossil fuel heating in homes, making a significant carbon saving.

Non-domestic RHI

The latest non-domestic figures were also released this week, revealing that almost nine out of every 10 applications to the subsidy are for small biomass boilers. By contrast, of the 11,563 applications to the non-domestic scheme, zero were for CHP or ‘Deep Geothermal’ technologies. The full list can be found here.

Rich Clothier, the managing director of Britain’s most sustainable dairy producer Wyke Farms, recently told edie that the RHI and Contracts for Difference have been “absolutely critical” to his green initiatives. Read more about the RHI scheme here.

Brad Allen