As part of its £85m contribution to government departmental cuts announced in this week's budget, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has closed its Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) to new applications. The programme provided grant aid towards the cost of installing geothermal, pellet boilers, solar thermal and air source heat pumps.
In a statement the DECC said: "It was anticipated that support for the proposed Renewable Heat Incentive for heat under LCBP would continue up until its proposed introduction in April 2011. However, demand for grants has been unprecedented and we had very little unallocated funding remaining. It has been decided that by closing the programme now, these unallocated funds will contribute towards DECC's overall savings".
Reaction to the cuts from the renewables industry has been swift. Stuart Pocock, Technical Director at the Renewable Energy Association (REA), said: "We remain confident that the new Coalition Government is strongly committed to UK renewables. However, the renewable heat industry now has an urgent need for policy certainty going forward and we are awaiting a statement from DECC."
Underlined the difficulty of trying to run a renewable heat business, Pocock added: "The lack of certainty on the RHI means many of our members' projects are on hold and the industry cannot move forward. If you are trying to run a business, sudden announcements on valuable funding streams like this are obviously unhelpful and contribute to a growing sense of uncertainty."
The REA says that the UK is the worst performer on renewable heat in Europe, with the UK's renewable heat industry making up just 0.6 per cent of the heat market.
