http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/articles/i/5176/?cid=3

UK Climate Change Minister Greg Barker has outlined plans to ensure that the government's support mechanism for renewable heat technologies like heat pumps and biomass boilers stays within its budget.

The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which launched last year, pays non-domestic generators for the heat produced over a guaranteed period of 20 years.

But in a bid to avoid the shenanigans of the solar feed-in tariff (FIT), Barker's written statement to Parliament yesterday announced the setting a limit of £70 million for the scheme in this financial year, to guarantee that it will stay within its budget of £251 million in 2013/14 and beyond.

A management 'stand-by' mechanism will set a trigger point of £67.9 million, giving one week's notice of the cessation of the scheme.

"A higher limit for 2012/13 would leave insufficient funds available in the following year for new installations, and therefore could be very damaging to the renewable heat industry," says Barker.

The government says that the short notice period allows it to set a much higher trigger point, but pledges to provide a weekly update on its website detailing committed expenditure to date.

But Barker said that at the current rate of uptake, the government does not envisage having to invoke the mechanism.

He added that the government remains committed to the RHI and is "on track" to meet the delivery timetable for rolling out the scheme more widely to provide longer term support for households and expanding the non-domestic scheme.