Rumours have surfaced today that the Green Home Grant Voucher Scheme (GHGVS) will be scrapped in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s budget announcement, coming next week. Highlighted by nearly 20 organisations representing or working within energy efficiency and low carbon heating sector, scrapping the scheme will put jobs in jeopardy and endanger the UK’s abilities to reach net zero targets at risk.
Premature closure of the Green Homes Grant Scheme would put jobs in jeopardy, dash the dreams of homeowners and put the UK’s Net Zero target at significant risk
Whilst the Green Homes Grant has come in for a great deal of criticism, and has struggled to attract installers, partly because of the terms and conditions, and partly because of the apparent failings in its administration, the scheme has successfully raised consumer awareness of heat pump technology to a level that no other intervention to date has achieved.
REA’s CEO, Dr Nina Skorupska CBE, said that ‘the change required over the next three decades is on a par to that experienced during the industrial revolution.’
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The National Gas Centre for Excellence (NGCFE) has opened the doors of its 6,000 sq. ft state-of-the-art centre in Featherstone, West Yorkshire to tackle the national shortage in qualified heating engineers with high-quality training focused on the needs of the installers and engineers.
Developed in partnership with EV Comply, the step-by-step solution takes the customer through the OZEV grants application process* and connects them to their closest myenergi-approved independent. While saving time and money for the consumer, installers benefit from sales leads direct to their inbox.
Over £165 million of Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP) funding has been awarded since the scheme opened for applications in 2019. The most recent recipient is Kent County Council who has secured £2,478,000 to support the development of a low carbon heat network in Maidstone.
It’s not been an easy time to recruit staff in the renewable energy sector. We asked Andrew England, Head of Clean Energy at energy employment specialists, Eleven Recruitment, for his take on where we are and what lies ahead…
The Government recently consulted on its proposals to improve the energy performance of privately rented homes as part of its plans to reduce carbon emissions from buildings. However, while proposals put forward will go some way to tackling the improvements needed, they do not go far enough.
The UK’s first houses to demonstrate the use of hydrogen-fuelled appliances in a real-world setting are to be built by Northern Gas Networks (NGN), the company has announced.
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On 8th February the Government reluctantly admitted that it had issued just 20,000 GHG vouchers since the scheme began in Autumn 2020, immediately hampering efforts towards the PM’s ambitious 600,000 heat pump installations per year by 2028. Then just days later the situation was exacerbated when it was announced that hundreds of millions of pounds would be withdrawn from the scheme entirely.
“It’s a unique architecture. Rather than sandwiching solar generating materials between glass or other substrates, we take a polymer substrate and in it we create microstructures that are smaller than a human hair to create a dense pattern of solar cells – it’s the same process used to make the holograms you see on credit cards.”
Glass might be great for looking through but, unfortunately, it’s a very poor insulator. In a typical house, windows account for roughly 10% of the total heat lost and two thirds of this is radiation through the glazing itself.
Northern Gas Networks (NGN) has completed the project as part of H21, in collaboration with fellow gas distribution networks Cadent, Scottish Gas Networks and Wales & West Utilities. It builds on the earlier H21 Leeds City Gate project, which established a hydrogen conversion of the gas grid was technically possible and economically viable.
The well-known issue with many renewable technologies is inconsistency in supply. Whilst the UK might have pledged to create 40 GW of installed offshore capacity by 2030, the supply is very dependent on it being windy. On days when it isn’t, we must fall back on stored electricity.
The Heat Pump Association (HPA), which represents around 95% of the heat pump manufacturing market share, has surveyed its members to estimate the supply of heat pumps in 2021. This has revealed that manufactures have placed orders with their supply chains to deliver a total of 67,000 units in 2021. This equates to a nearly double the number of heat pumps on shelves and in warehouses ready for installers to meet the growing consumer demand.
While hydrogen certainly offers great potential, it’s often overlooked that it is untested technology at present and, meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
“The UK also lacks the manufacturing capacity to switch to heat pumps for new builds. Current housing new builds is running at an annual completion level of 177,980 units, but there is only one UK manufacturer of Air Sourced Heat Pumps, Mitsubishi in Scotland, with a capacity of 3,000 units per year. Almost all gas boilers fitted in the UK are built here, so we would be closing a successful UK manufacturing sector to import an inferior overseas product.”
In July last year, ministers passed secondary legislation to allow battery storage to bypass the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project process in Britain. This relaxing of planning legislation allowed for storage projects above 50MW in England and 350MW in Wales to proceed without approval through the national planning regime.
Panasonic are currently offering installers £800 and their customers an additional £600 as part of their Green Install Cashback Scheme and Green Homes Cashback scheme.
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