Government announces policy "to revolutionise how heat is generated and used in buildings"

The Government has announced details of the £860m Renewable Heat Incentive policy to revolutionise the way heat is generated and used in buildings and homes. It's remarkable for a number of reasons:

- Like the Feed-In Tariff, the RHI takes a long-term approach to incentivising installation of renewable heat (from biomass, solar thermal, ground and water source heat-pumps, on-site biogas, deep geothermal, energy from waste and biomethane)

- It’s the first of its kind in the world (i.e. there has never been a separate guideline for renewable heat): it’s a significant move, as around half of the UK’s current carbon emissions come from the energy used to produce heat – more than from generating electricity. In fact over 95% of heat in the UK is currently produced by burning fossil fuel.

- There is one scheme for industry/commercial/public sector and one for the domestic sector: Targets include the expansion of renewable heat in the industrial/commercial 7-fold by 2020. This scheme also gives the opportunities for schools, libraries, community centres and communities of households to install renewable heat.

- A full system of RHI payments will be available to households from October 2012; and the Government says that in the interim, more than a quarter of the first year’s budget will be guaranteed for up to 25,000 household installations through a “RHI Premium Payment” to encourage take-up. Those who sign up to a premium payment must prove

- It will be particularly useful for rural areas because these technologies are often particularly appropriate for areas where there is low density of housing which is not necessarily near mains electricity or gas.

- The initial investment by government is £860m, which is expected to increase green capital investment by £4.5 billion up to 2020. The Government says this will create a large and thriving market in renewable heat

The Department for Energy and Climate Change will seek Parliamentary approval of the regulations in July 2011 and will introduce the tariff scheme after that.

Reactions

We will track further reactions over the coming days, but the main initial criticism is that the scheme excludes air source heat pumps, one technology which is used to produce renewable heat.

YouGen’s Cathy Debenham blogs about the domestic side here:

For first reactions on Twitter follow #rhi

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Architype's Jonathan Hines explains why the "passivhaus" approach works best

Jonathan Hines from Architype, an Ashden Award winner in 2009, talks to Juliet Heller about designing buildings that are affordable, look good, and use less energy.

Architype puts this approach into practice by focusing on passivhaus techniques. Passivhaus is a rigorous approach to building, designed to radically reduce energy consumption and achieve maximum internal comfort. Passivhaus buildings save carbon simply by using less energy. Architype has recently designed two passivhaus schools in Wolverhampton which will be completed this summer. They will be the first in the country.

Jonathan Hines: "The beauty of passivhaus is that it's not about ticking boxes, it is a design tool that really works. You can aim to build a low-carbon building by adding renewables but find that the technology doesn't perform as well as you'd hoped in practice. With passivhaus you know that it works, it will get the energy down lower, and it will last for the long term".

"In the current climate of austerity measures, designing buildings well to save energy is the way to go, not spending more money on technologies that just offset carbon".

"We should be setting energy targets for buildings instead of carbon targets. This would encourage people to design buildings that use less energy in the first place, instead of relying on offsetting. The concept is an obvious one but so important: Buildings need to be designed better to improve their energy efficiency".

(pic: Jonathan Hines outside Architype's office, built to high standards of energy efficiency, constructed largely using wood and based on an existing barn).

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