More social landlords and their tenants could soon be benefitting from renewable heating, helping them have warmer homes and lower bills.
Changes to the domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) mean that from Spring 2015 Registered Social Landlords will no longer be required to have a Green Deal Assessment in order to apply for the innovative RHI scheme.
If social landlords already have Energy Performance Certificates for their properties, and these are less than two years old, they will be able to apply to the scheme without requiring a Green Deal Assessment.
Amber Rudd MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Climate Change, said: “Renewable heating is a win-win for everyone – landlords, tenants and the environment.
“Social landlords often provide homes for some of the most vulnerable people, by making the RHI more accessible to them, we hope more of their tenants will be able to enjoy warmer homes and lower bills.”
Latest statistics on fuel poverty show there are 2.28m fuel poor households in the UK, and 365,000 of them live in social housing.
Fuel poverty can be exacerbated for some if they need to pay upfront for their heating as is the case for many with oil fired systems.
Andrew Burke, of the National Housing Federation said: “These changes to the RHI will reduce the unnecessary bureaucracy and costs for Social Landlords applying for RHI but the real benefit will be for their tenants, who will have warmer homes and lower energy bills. Renewable heating makes a big difference by reducing fuel poverty in off-gas grid areas.”
A further change to the domestic RHI scheme will see the list of eligible technologies expand to include cooker stoves from Spring 2015. These are biomass stoves with back boilers, mainly designed for space and hot water heating, but can also be used for cooking. As cooker stoves are biomass stoves, they will receive the biomass tariff of 12.2p/kWh.
