Micro-CHP Gets Boost in Great Britain - Forbes

The United Kingdom's Department of Energy and Climate Change is revising incentive levels for small scale, clean heat and power technologies.

The big winner appears to be micro combined heat and power, or micro-CHP. Otherwise, the renewable energy industry fared poorly.

The DECC released a slate of changes to the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) program proposed reduced incentives for wind power, anaerobic digestion and hydro technologies and increased incentives for micro-CHP, which are similar to conventional gas boilers except that they produce electric power in addition to heat. The incentives for solar photovoltaics were adjusted earlier this year.

The RHI is a feed-in-tariff that provides an incentive to investors in renewable heat and small scale electricity technologies and ensures low-carbon energy technologies can compete with cheaper but dirtier technologies like many of those that rely on oil and coal. The incentive is paid for by consumers as part of their energy bills. The revised incentive levels will take effect in December and will remain in place for micro-CHP until deployment levels reach 30,000 units.

"I want to provide long term certainty for those choosing to invest in all forms of small scale green electricity generation, not just solar, and our changes to FITs will do just that," said Greg Barker, the Minister of Energy and Climate Change.

The Micropower Council, an UK trade association that promotes the market for small scale, clean heat and power technologies, expressed mixed reactions to the proposed revisions.

"We welcome what is broadly a very positive set of proposals that should bring greater confidence to investors and customers," said Dave Snowden, the chief executive of the Micropower Council. "We are however disappointed that the Government has not accepted the case for a generation tariff of at least 15p/kWh for micro-CHP as we believe this to be the minimum level needed to this technology a much-needed boost."