Facts about the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)

The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is indeed the world’s first long-term financial support program for the utilization of the renewable heat which is environment friendly, clean and economic source of energy. The RHI pays the participants of the scheme that rightly generate and use the renewable energy to heat their buildings during the colder seasons. By increasing the overall generation of the heat from the renewable energy sources (instead of the fossil fuels), the RHI helps UK reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and also meet the targets for the purpose of reducing the overall effects of the climate change.

There are two major parts to the RHI:
Domestic RHI – launched at 9th April 2014 and open to the all homeowners, private landlords, social landlords and the self-builders
Non-domestic RHI – launched in November 2011 in order to provide payments to the industry, businesses and public sector organisations
The RHI is undoubtedly the main scheme of the overall heat strategy.
The domestic RHI scheme

The domestic RHI scheme was opened on 9th of April 2014.
It is indeed a financial incentive scheme which is designed to encourage uptake of the renewable heating among the domestic consumers. The domestic RHI is majorly targeted at, but not limited to, homes off the gas grid. Those without the of mains gas have the most potential to save on the fuel bills and decrease the carbon emissions considerably.

The scheme will cover the single domestic dwellings and will be open to the homeowners, the private landlords, social landlords and the self-builders. It will not be open to the new built properties other than the self-built.
The tariffs have been set at a particular level that reflects the expected cost of the renewable heat generation over the course of twenty years. Payments will be made on a quarterly basis.

The launch of the scheme follows an extensive consultation on how a financial incentive would work best for the householders and the landlords. We set out the policy framework for the proper introduction of longer term support for domestic renewable heating in ‘Renewable Heat Incentive: the first step to the transformation of the way we heat our homes’ in the July 2013. Alongside this we published the government response to the consultation, RHI: proposals to launch a domestic scheme, and the associated impact assessment.

Other documents which were published alongside the domestic RHI policy framework and government response include two of the technical guidance documents which provide the further information on the metering. We have also rightly published a guidance document which absolutely sets out the process by which the technologies become eligible for the RHI.

More details on RHI

At the time of the July announcement, we still needed to finalise when the legacy applicants would be able to apply for the scheme, the details of how they would rightly manage the domestic RHI budget, treatment of some types of the subsidy and confirmation of the solar thermal tariff. This document also provides a fair update on the process of implementation of the biomass sustainability requirements.