The £860 million Renewable Heat Incentive, announced today by the government, is good news for householders and businesses that choose to switch from traditional heating to technologies such as solar thermal panels, ground source heat pumps, and wood chip burners. For the first time ever, householders, businesses and schools will be able to make money from heating their properties. This makes fitting renewable energy to your property not only much more attractive, but very affordable.

The uptake of renewable heat technologies has really dropped off with the renewable heat incentive (RHI) still looming, but no confirmation of the final tariffs or criteria, and the recent removal of the LCBP grants.

No doubt things will pick up once the RHI details have been announced there. However, based on the response to the feed-in tariff this has the potential to be very dangerous.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change today published plans for a scheme to incentivise renewable heat generation at all scales. The Renewable heat incentive scheme (RHI) will be a world first.

The RHI will come into effect in April 2011 and guarantee payments for those who install technologies such as ground source heat pumps, solar thermal hot water systems, biomass boilers and air source heat pumps.

As you may know the government is currently running a boiler scrappage scheme for England giving households a £400 incentive if they upgrade a G-rated boiler for a modern heating system.

What a lot of people are unaware of is that this scheme also covers heat pumps.

As MCS accredited heat pump installers this means that our customers qualify for an additional £900 Low Carbons Building Programme grant against installation.

That’s £1,300 available towards the installation of an air source heat pump!