BEAMA

Scheme Details

The Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) is a one off ‘grant type’ offer to incentivise the uptake of renewable heat technologies in the period up to the formal launch of domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) tariffs in 2012.

The Government has launched eligibility criteria for payments. The Energy Saving Trust will administer the scheme - visit the website  or call 0800 512 012, using vouchers which will be issued from 1st August 2011, valid for periods outlined below. The scheme will end & all vouchers expire on 31st March 2012.

The RHPP offers the following one off payments to incentivise take up:

Available to all households regardless of the type of heating system used

Solar thermal                                     £300 (voucher valid for 3 months)

Available to homes without mains gas heating

Air souce to water Heat Pump      £850 (voucher valid for 5 months)
Biomass boiler                                £950 (voucher valid for 6 months)
Ground source Heat Pump           £1250 (voucher valid for 6 months)

NB air to air Heat Pumps or exhaust air Heat Pumps are not supported by the RHPP.

Customers will be required to self declare that they have basic energy efficiency measures (loft insulation to 250mm and cavity wall insulation where practical) and will be asked to complete surveys after payment. All claims for payments must be in by 31st March 2012. Customers taking up the RHPP will not be precluded from the full RHI tariff system if they satisfy all prevailing eligibility criteria for that scheme. In effect, this becomes a one off grant scheme.

Installations must be completed by an installer registered under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) and products must be also certified under the MCS scheme or Solar Keymark for solar thermal installations .

£3m of the £15M overall budget will be set aside for registered social landlords to improve their housing stock. Details of how to apply will be announced at a later date. The rest of the funding is spread across all technologies, although there may be restrictions to some technologies in later months to ensure a fair spread of technologies, for example reviewing monies going to solar thermal after 10,000 installations.

Transition To The Renewable Heat Incentive

The Government has made it clear that claimants of the RHPP will not be precluded from applying for the RHI tariffs when launched alongside the Green Deal in 2012. However, they may be required to fulfil additional eligibility criteria relating to energy efficiency and almost certainly will have needed to have completed their monitoring obligations (complete a survey) from the RHPP.

BEAMA position

BEAMA generally welcomes the RHPP as an interim incentive to boost uptake of heat pump technologies in the domestic sector. However, the association continues to make clear to Ministers and officials that RHPP recipients should be ‘grand fathered’ onto the RHI tariff scheme when launched rather than requiring additional eligibility criteria that are unreasonable. This includes any criteria relating to the overall heating system design including removal of any fossil fuel appliance present and potentially used as back up heat generation. Minimum energy efficiency requirements are welcomed for technologies that relate to heat load.