The government should be opening the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to applications from the end of November, after having to make changes to the scheme to gain approval from the EU.
The scheme was due to be launched on 30 September but just days before it was due to go ahead, the European Union ruled that the tariff for large scale biomass installations generating over 1MW of energy was too high, under State Aid regulations. The tariff for larger scale projects will fall from 2.7p per kilowatt hour to 1p per kilowatt hour.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said: “We have now updated the Renewable Heat Incentive regulations to reflect the required change to large scale biomass tariff by the European Commission.”
“The regulations have been laid before Parliament and, subject to Parliamentary approval, we hope to open the scheme before the end of November,” she continued in the statement. “We appreciate that this is frustrating, however without this change the scheme would not have been able to proceed.”
The RHI is being launched for businesses in the first stage, but is expected to be opened up to domestic properties in autumn 2012. This will allow homeowners to receive support in installing a variety of renewable energy sources, including biomass energy sources such as wood pellet stoves and geothermal equipment such as heat pumps.
Other popular types of renewable energy sources which will be include in the scheme include the installation of biomass boilers, such as a wood pellet and log boiler, and solar thermal panels, so there are plenty of options available to all homeowners who are interested in green energy sources.