OPINION
CARBON CONNECT CALLS FOR COMMITMENT TO RENEWABLE HEAT TECHNOLOGIES
F
ollowing the news that the Government is looking to reform the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), Carbon Connect has responded to claims that
the plans could see a 98% reduction in the deployment of non-domestic biomass boilers and an end to support for solar water heating systems. This comes after reductions to the RHI were announced in the Autumn Spending Review, 2015, but no indications were made that this kind of reformation was planned.
Carbon Connect’s Policy for Heat report found that the non-domestic RHI scheme has delivered a poor diversity of technology uptake, with small and medium biomass boilers accounting for 95% of installations. The domestic scheme has been slightly better in terms of diversity of uptake, but biomass is still the largest portion of installations.
The Policy for Heat report calls for a wide mix of renewable heat technologies to be given relevant support to increase uptake of technologies such as solar thermal, heat pumps and geothermal, as these were not being appropriately supported by government.
12% of the UK’s heat needs to come from renewable source by 2020, an ambition the British Government has agreed to. It could be agreed that the RHI is in need of reform - at current levels, it is not fulfilling
its intended purpose of driving low carbon heat effectively and in 2013 it supported only 0.6 TWh, comprising just 3% of the low carbon heat in the economy. This must improve, and the changes proposed by the Government would seriously hamper its ability to reach the level truly needed to meet ambitions.
The non-domestic scheme has been unsuccessful at driving uptake of non-biomass technologies. Cutting support for solar thermal, and potentially for anaerobic digestion would be a huge error of judgement, and seriously jeopardise the Government’s ambition of meeting 12% of heat demand from renewable sources by 2020. DECC’s figures show that Solar Thermal held a 17% share of installations in the domestic RHI, which is not insignificant in the decarbonisation challenge. Despite this, it only provides 2% of the non-domestic scheme’s installations. The aim should be to grow this share, not cut it all together.
The renewables sector is considered to be one of the fastest growing business sectors in the UK to date, supporting a swathe of jobs. In May 2015, the Renewable Energy Association reported that “In the UK as a whole, employment in renewable energy increased by 9% across all sectors, bringing the total number working in the industry to 112,026... The increase in renewable energy employment is now
outstripping growth in market values in many sectors.”
The report also calls on the Government to introduce a mandated renewable heat market share target, rather than an ambition, as this current ambition is far from being reached. An extension of the RHI would give DECC the certainty to plan and make any amendments needed to re-balance the funding system beyond biomass heating.
Carbon Connect is calling for the Government to give more substantial support to promoting the various technologies on the market in the form of a national low carbon-heating technology deployment feasibility strategy. This would make deployment of different technologies more effective and efficient.
Carbon Connect is part of the Policy Connect network, a not-for-profit social enterprise working to inform and improve UK public policy.
To find out more,
visit
www.policyconnect.org.uk/cc call 0207 202 8585 or email
owain.mortimer@
policyconnect.org.uk
To find out more about the Policy for Heat report visit
www.policyconnect.org.uk/cc/research
Marco, CEO OF Watly, comments on National Infrastructure Commission report
A 10
report from the UK government’s National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has advised that the country could save up to
£8 billion a year by investing in smarter infrastructure which uses electricity better. Calling for a ‘Smart Power Revolution’, the NIC also make the case that the UK needs to store much more energy from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar which generate power intermittently. Marco Attisani, founder and CEO of cleantech company Watly, comments: “In
highlighting the cost benefits of a smarter energy grid, the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission has drawn attention to just how unwieldy our current energy infrastructures can be. This can cause particular issues when developed countries try to integrate renewable sources into our existing energy grids.
“Technological advances have now given us the capability to design radical new infrastructures which not only adapt to a changing world, but shape the world to our advantage. We need to develop smart grids which create sustainable supplies of our
ENERGY MANAGER MAGAZINE • MARCH 2016
most basic modern commodities, for instance fusing water and electricity provision with the delivery of Internet, the idea of the Energynet. As our existing power stations and energy paradigms become increasingly outdated, we must consider using the technology which is at our disposal in order to create infrastructures which are sustainable, adaptable and fit for the 21st century and beyond.”
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