Government threatened with legal action over green policy

The government is facing a threat of legal action over one of its major green construction policies after heat pump installers and manufacturers claimed it has damaged their industry

The Ground Source Heat Pump Association has threatened to seek an injunction against the Renewable Heat Incentive unless the government makes a number of key changes to the scheme.

The Renewable Heat Incentive launched in November 2011 and pays building owners who install renewable heat generating technologies for each kWh of heat they generate. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is currently consulting on plans to extend the scheme, which currently only serves the commercial property market, to domestic properties and bring new technologies into the commercial scheme.

But speaking to Building the chair of the Ground Source Heat Pump Association (GSHPA), Brian Kennelly, said the current structure of the scheme biased the market in favour of biomass boilers to the detriment of heat pumps.

He said: “Before the RHI was in place we had a growing market… The industry is a quarter the size it was in 2008.”

“They are absolutely killing off an area of green growth,” he added.

Figures from energy industry regulator Ofgem show that 99% of the heating capacity currently installed under the scheme has been from biomass boilers.

Kennelly said he had written to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) demanding it make an announcement on key changes to the scheme before the end of the year.

“We could take the legal route and get a court injunction to suspend it [RHI] on the grounds that it biases the market unfairly. That market is anti-competitive as a result. It’s not something anybody wants,” he said.

The GSHPA wants to see an increase in the assumed efficiency of heat pumps, which in turn would increase the level of the tariffs - it is this that Kennelly wants to see an announcement on before the end of the year. But it also wants a streamlining of the approval process for installations.

A spokesperson for DECC said the department was aware of the industry’s “concerns” and was amassing evidence on the cost and input assumptions attributed to heat pumps.

“We have been working with a range of industry groups, including the GSHPA, on this and aim to report on our conclusions in the New Year,” the spokesperson said.