Government takes step in right direction

GI Energy, the UK market leader in Ground Source Heat Pump systems, has welcomed the Government’s proposal to raise the Renewable Heat Incentive tariffs for non-domestic installations.

Chris Davidson, Director of Development at GI Energy praised Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker for proposing changes that will boost uptake of this renewable energy.

Mr Davidson said: “Greg Barker has shown that he is serious about wanting to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint by proposing to increase the RHI payments for Ground Source Heat Pump systems.

“The minister and his team clearly understands the huge potential of Ground Source Heat Pump systems for heating and cooling buildings without running up massive bills or damaging our environment.

“This is a fantastic boost for the industry and I am sure that it will help to grow the market: in future many more people will work in buildings that are heated and cooled by Ground Source Heat Pumps.

”The RHI is a world first and quite clearly Mr Barker wants to make sure it does what it says on the tin – provide an incentive to switch to renewable forms of heating.”

The Department of Energy and Climate Change is proposing to more than double the tariff for large scale installations, to between 8.9 and 10.2 pence per kilowatt-hour of renewable heat produced.

Current tariffs for Ground Source Heat Pumps are 3.5 pence for large installations of 100kW or more, and 4.8 pence for smaller ones, and there was concern that those were not high enough to boost uptake of the technology.

Mr Davidson said: “The beauty of Ground Source Heat Pumps is that they use the heat stored naturally underground, so are many times more efficient than conventional heating and cooling.

“And they can be used in reverse during hotter months to cool a building: the heat is simply returned underground to be stored for later use. The systems are at their most efficient when both heating and cooling are provided.”

GI Energy pioneered the use of Ground Source Heat Pump systems in the UK and to date has completed more than 200MW of installations, from schools in Orkney to One New Change in London.  

The technology is tried and tested: at One New Change the GI Energy system was monitored for a year. For every kilowatt hour of power required to run it, 4.1 kilowatt hours of heating and/or cooling was produced.

GI Energy has installations in schools, universities, supermarkets, hospitals, police headquarters, district heating schemes and commercial developments. Sainsbury’s supermarket was the first customer to take up a new finance package offered by GI Energy that was designed to kick start the market.