First firms sign up to RHI
A Sheffield umbrella supplier and a group of holiday cottages in Yorkshire have become the first companies to take advantage of the renewable heat incentive (RHI).
After installing low-carbon heat-generating equipment, Booth Brothers and Broadgate Farm Cottages will receive payments for every kilowatt-hour of heat they generate over the next 20 years.
Launched on 28 November, the RHI is the government’s flagship scheme to encourage wider uptake of renewable heating technologies such as ground- and air-source heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar thermal panels and will provide £860 million in subsidies.
Booth Brothers, applied for the RHI with its plans to install a 24kW water-source heat pump at its offices in an 18th-century corn mill, as a part of the firm’s move towards carbon neutrality at the site.
Meanwhile, Broadgate Farm Cottages received accreditation for a 4.3kW ground-source heat pump that will heat five holiday cottages at its site in East Yorkshire and will be submitting further applications under the scheme in future.
Elaine Robinson, owner of Broadgate Farm Cottages, highlighted the financial benefits of adopting renewable heat for businesses in remote areas.
“We don’t have mains gas and oil and LPG is very expensive, so when we decided to develop the holiday cottages a ground source heat pump was the most economically attractive in the long term, especially with the RHI.”
Under the scheme both companies will receive quarterly payments of 4.5p per metered kWh of heat generated by their equipment.
The first phase of the RHI focuses on non-domestic installation of equipment, and offers organisations the opportunity to benefit from subsidies of between 1.9p-8.5p per kWh for investing in renewable heating technologies.
The government is set to launch domestic payments under the scheme alongside the Green Deal in October.
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