The oil-fired heating body, OFTEC, slammed the current carbon reduction policy in a statement this week as it pointed out its failings to attract support across the UK.
Since the domestic RHI launched in April 2014, less than 1,000 renewable heating solutions were installed under the scheme. In total, just 11,149 installations went into homes, according the figures published by DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change).
The number of renewable heating solutions installed in a year is close to what DECC hoped would go into homes every month to hit its 2020 target. The department needs 10,800 installations a month to hit its target of 750,000 installations by 2020. OFTEC said the policy is simply not working.
“Current take up of the RHI is falling way behind the targets DECC set out in its initial impact assessment and just serves to highlight the considerable failings of the scheme which OFTEC anticipated from the outset,” said OFTEC director general Jeremy Hawksley.
“The high upfront costs of installing renewable technologies, which are typically between £9k and £14k, are prohibitive for all but the wealthy few. Even with RHI incentive payments, most people simply can’t afford to take up the scheme, even if they want to.
"Exacerbating the low take up of the RHI is also the complexity of both the application process and the practical issues involved in installing renewable technologies.”
Jeremy Hawksley continued:
“With the election now behind us, a full review of the domestic RHI is now essential. We believe it should be replaced by a more joined-up carbon reduction and energy efficiency policy that would encourage far greater consumer buy in. This would still include renewable technology incentives but also encompass more affordable measures such as a boiler scrappage scheme to incentivise the switch to high efficiency condensing boilers.
There is still clearly a strong demand for these greener, cheaper to run boilers with sales for Q1 this year up 7% on the equivalent period in 2014.
“These simple changes would make carbon reduction and energy efficiency measures accessible to many more households – especially the elderly and fuel poor – which now are excluded from the RHI because of the high upfront costs of renewables.”
DECC’s own surveys show that concern about climate change has dropped among people’s priorities in the UK from 22% in March 2014 to 15% in March 2015.
Jeremy Hawksley concludes:
“The DECC poll clearly underlines that the appetite for prohibitively expensive, wholly renewable heating systems just isn’t there. The majority of the public don’t see climate change as an important issue in the context of the other challenges our country faces.
“However, evidence strongly suggests that the government is using the wrong vehicle to encourage people to cut CO2 emissions, with the RHI in its present form making little impact. A more realistic, pragmatic solution is clearly needed if the country is to significantly reduce its carbon footprint.”