If you have ever considered making your business green and installing a renewable heating technology, you can get a proportion of your installation and running costs funded by the Renewable Heating Incentive for the next 20 years or throughout your installation’s lifespan.

The renewable Heating Incentive (RHI) is a government funding scheme to encourage businesses and domestic households in England, Scotland and Wales only, to install renewable heating systems such as heat pumps, solar thermal and biomass heating to replace the current fossil fuelled systems. The RHI is here to provide a long term incentive for changing your heating system to one that uses renewable sources.

To date the RHI is available to non-domestic sectors including industrial, commercial, non-profit organisations and public sectors with eligible heating system installations that supply large-scale industrial heating for small businesses, schools, hospitals and any district heating systems where multiple households are heated from one boiler.

The renewable heating systems eligible for the Renewable Heating Incentive include solid biomass heating, ground source heat pumps, water source heat pumps, deep geothermal systems and solar thermal.

How much funding you are entitled to depends on the type of renewable energy heating system you install, your installations energy production capacity, and your businesses energy requirements. The tariff is also calculated on kilowatt hour (kWh) renewable heating produced.

How your business could be eligible

To ensure that your business is eligible for the funding your renewable heating technology must have been installed on or after 15^th July 2009, be new and of a certain capacity. Ofgem’s website has more detail on the funding available; please note that if you cannot find your renewable system’s capacity on Ofgem then it will not be eligible for the RHI.

Your system must have been installed by a Microgeneration Certificate Scheme (MCS) approved installer; the equipment must use liquid or steam to deliver the heat and be used to heat a space or water within a building.

Please Note:

• You will not be eligible for the RHI if the equipment is used to heat a single home – this is a different form of RHI which will be available in the spring 2014 for domestic households.
• A public grant cannot be used to install the equipment and you won’t be eligible for the RHI scheme if your business has received National Lottery funding, unless you received the funding between July 2009 and November 2011 and you have repaid the funding.
• If you use a biomass heating system, the system must be able to only burn biomass.
• Ground and water heat pumps must have a Coefficient of Performance of at least 2.9.
• Solar thermal hot water systems must have water heating panels made from either flat plate or evacuated tubes.

If you are interested in making your business green today and believe that your business qualifies for the RHI, then your incentive payments will be paid to you throughout your renewable technology’s lifespan or over 20 years, paid in instalments every 3 months.