Volume 2, Issue 2
Feature: UK: 12% heat from renewables by 2020 |
The UK government is introducing a new policy, the Renewable Heat Incentive, which is the first of its kind in the world and is aimed to cut carbon emissions associated with the production of heat. The policy’s target is to have 12% of the country’s heat come from a renewable source by 2020, meeting targets set by the EU. Currently only 1.5% of heat comes from renewable energy, even though just under half of all the UK’s carbon emissions come from heat. The incentive will be introduced in two phases. The first phase will be a long-term tariff support plan targeted towards ‘big emitters’ in the non-domestic sector, such as small and large businesses and community heating projects. As part of this phase, the government also wants to entice the domestic sector with a short-term scheme to help introduce renewable heat into homes. It has earmarked £15 million (€17.2 million) as premium payments for these households. Under the scheme, a range of renewable technologies and fuel uses will be supported, such as solid and gaseous biomass, solar thermal, ground and water source heat-pumps, on-site biogas, deep geothermal, energy from waste and an injection of biomethane into the grid. Paul Thompson, head of policy at the Department for Energy and Climate Change explains: ‘In the domestic sector we expect about 25,000 households to sign up for the first 18 months. We’re setting aside a generous amount.’ Although he adds: ‘Whether people will perceive it as generous is another story. There will be a feed-in-tariff that will provide an ongoing income for those that have the equipment. It will give value for money as it begins to operate on a much larger scale.’ The payments will be spread out over a 20 year period and the programme will begin in July 2011, with further details about the scheme due to be announced in May 2011. In order to qualify, those installing biomass heaters with more than 1MW of production will need to report each quarter on the sustainability of their biomass feedstock for combustion. It is not yet known how they will do this, but the method will be outlined in the new rules in May. So far it is also unknown how much money participants will receive at a time. Before the government commits to a figure, it says it wants to be able to better predict the levels of performance the systems will have. Thompson says: ‘It’s all guesswork on how much they (participants) are going to receive. At the moment the premium payments are set at £300. We’re talking about working out what the payments will be after that and whether to meter it and it seems the meters are affordable. Biomass boilers will get a £950 premium payment for domestic usage and then for the rest it will depend on their metered usage.’
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