Stability for now
Much needed certainty
Many renewable heating installers along with the
The £270m budget set aside for green heat networks
businesses adopting renewable heating have been
was another very positive sign that the government
concerned about where we are going after the RHI, so
is taking this march to Net Zero seriously, clearly
this announcement provides some stability.
signalling that it’s willing to back up its strong
The announcement of the extension will also
statements on decarbonisation with affirmative action.
inject much needed confidence into the industry,
It’s also encouraging to see a further £100m set
allowing manufacturers to more effectively forecast
aside for 2022/23 and 2023/24 as grant-funding for
and providing a platform to continue growing and
households and residential buildings to install heat
establishing a sustainable UK heat pump market.
pumps to replace fossil fuel heating. This will form part
The extra year will also allow BEIS time to find a suitable replacement scheme to RHI, which helps
of government action to help build supply chains ahead of future measures to phase out high-carbon heating.
consumers transition more quickly away from gas and
What all this amounts to is much needed certainty,
oil, helping put the country on the road to zero carbon.
helping the industry to build supply chains that will be
Encouraging adoption
instrumental in phasing out high-carbon heating and
The vast majority of UK households are currently
2050 target.
being heated using high carbon fossil fuels and, at the moment the costs of these fuels remains relatively cheap, so people aren’t incentivised to move to renewable heating. This is where the RHI is designed to encourage the uptake of low carbon renewable technologies such as heat pumps because it provides quarterly payments for seven years on every kilowatt of renewable heat your home uses. The government is particularly concerned with the burning of the most unsustainable fuels - Oil and LPG in our homes, so the RHI is therefore integral in driving the uptake of renewable heating technologies.
firmly setting the country on the road to its ambitious
This was an undoubtedly ambitious package of green measures, but necessarily so in order to redress the threat to the environment posed by high carbon nonrenewable heating.
____________________ This article from Max Halliwell is based on his regular blog spot on Mitsubishi Electric’s The Hub, which contains useful and informative industry news, views and comment. les.mitsubishielectric. co.uk/the-hub To find out more about Ecodan heat pumps visit Ecodan.co.uk
For this to be truly effective though, we would like to see the introduction of levies that the chancellor has proposed stretched further to help reduce the run costs of renewable heating methods when compared to natural gas. This would enable and encourage the growing number of people who realise that they have to change the way they heat their homes, to adopt low carbon systems earlier than they otherwise might.
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