BEAMA Welcomes Government Heat Pump Support
Kelly Butler, BEAMA’s marketing director, has welcomed the Government’s commitment to support heat pumps. He comments: “The BEAMA Domestic Heat Pump Association has only recently been set up, so the Government’s announcement so soon is great news for the industry.
“The Renewable Energy Strategy identifies that by 2020 heat pumps can play a key role in increasing the renewable heat share from 1% to 12%. BEAMA welcomes the Government’s commitment and clarification of applying the Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) to all renewable heat installations from July 2009 up to, and beyond, RHI’s launch during April 2011. It’s bringing confidence to industry and customers.
“The lead scenario of generating more than 30% of electricity from renewables further strengthens the electrical heating/heat pump case due to consequential grid de-carbonisation.
“In a busy time of Government announcements, we’re delighted it has listened to some common sense lobbying - and applied a 50% bonus to the installation of heat pumps under the Community Energy Saving Programme.
“This is in line with our recommendations in the BEAMA consultation response and policy meeting with DECC during the Spring. Alongside the big bonus given to solid wall insulation (200%), we can now work with the insulation and energy supply industries to create a package of solid wall and heat pump proposals tackling dwellings at the community scale. This reinforces our association’s plan to promote the installation of some 1.5 million heat pumps in the UK by 2020.”