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THE GOVERNMENT HAS revealed the details of the Republic’s own Renewable Heating Incentive today.
After the North’s version of the scheme almost brought down the government, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that they wouldn’t be calling it the “Renewable Heat Incentive”.
Instead, Ireland’s scheme is called the Support Scheme for Renewable Heat.
Minister for Communications Denis Naughten has said the government has taken care to ensure the Republic doesn’t repeat the mistakes made in Northern Ireland.
He told TheJournal.ie that the government has “put a lot of checks and balances in place, we are not going to have the problems experienced in the North”.
The “cash-for-ash” scandal still hangs over DUP leader and former First Minister for Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster.
It aimed to encourage businesses and households to switch to more environmentally friendly heating methods through financial incentives.
But the subsidies that were paid out were not capped – meaning the more heat a business generated, the higher the subsidy it received. There were reports of businesses leaving the heating on all through the day, opening windows to cool down offices so that they would be entitled to more funding from the Stormont government.
The exploited, failed scheme is expected to cost taxpayers around £500 million – not to mention the political turmoil that ensued and led to the absence of a government in the North for most of 2017.
Highlighting the budgetary control measures in place, Naughten said lessons learned from schemes in other jurisdictions, such as Northern Ireland, have been included in the design of this support scheme.
“In particular, there are eligibility criteria that projects must conform to over the period of support payments. These criteria will ensure that heat generated under the scheme is applied to useful purposes only.
“In addition, there are a number of budgetary controls in order to control overall costs including project budget caps, a Scheme budget cap and periodic reviews to prevent windfall gains.”
So what’s Ireland’s new scheme about?
The new incentives aim to encourage homes and businesses to generate energy from renewable sources.
It aims to reduce Ireland’s reliance on fossil fuel heating systems, and provides financial incentives for renewable heat generation.
The support scheme will allow firms who generate heat from renewable energy sources to receive substantial ongoing payments.
The Republic’s scheme is designed to support financially the replacement of fossil fuel heating systems with renewable energy for “large heat demand non-domestic users”.
It covers commercial, industrial, agricultural, district heating, public sector and other non-domestic businesses and sectors. The aviation sector, large industrial plants and power generation companies are excluded.
Minister Naughten said:
The Support Scheme for Renewable Heat is a tangible and viable measure that will kick-start the biomass and biogas sectors. Crucially it will provide the basis to create new commercial opportunities for farmers in heat technologies including biomass boiler installations and new opportunities for foresters.
It will also contribute to meeting Ireland’s 2020 renewable energy and emission reduction targets.
Under the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive, Ireland has a target of 12% of energy consumed in the heat sector to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. Currently 6.8% of energy consumed in the heat sector in renewable.
Budget 2018 allocated €7 million to fund the initial phase of the Support Scheme for Renewable Heat next year.
The Support Scheme for Renewable Heat will consist of two support mechanisms.
The maximum tariffs paid will be 5.66 cents per kilowatt hour of energy produced from biomass heating systems and 2.95 cents per kilowatt hour of energy produced from anaerobic digestion heating systems.
“The economic analysis shows that biomass and anaerobic digestion have a significant role to play in Ireland’s renewable energy future,” Naughten.
He said the government is considering bringing supports for other technologies such as biomethane grid injection.
With reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha
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We’re a windy island, surrounded by an ocean and seas, that gets a reasonable amount of sunshine (enough for solar power at least).
We should be utilizing wave energy, wind turbines, and solar panels to the max, especially the first two.
Why the hell are we still buying millions and millions of barrels of oil off of headchopping terrorist funders from Saudi Arabia?
And pay 67% tax on top of it!
@Franklin Roosevelt: I would add biogas to that list.
@Franklin Roosevelt: our wonderful government would rather sell that to someone rather than put the public money into something that will see a return down the line
@Franklin Roosevelt: there’s actually quite a lot of tidal and wave energy research going on off the west coast of Ireland. I do think that large scale wind farms off the coast would be the way to go. In the long run more beneficial than lots of small scale ones on land
@Franklin Roosevelt: wind is gathering pace but people don’t like looking at them. Wave is a difficult one such an extreme environment it’s tough on equipment so regular maintenance at sea is a mare
@Carpentoza: Also there’s no consistency with wind, and they are bloody expensive to install / maintain offshore. PV solar could work I guess, but it requires a huge surface area to generate anything worthwhile, and it’s not much use from November to March. Tidal is a great one but it’s struggling to make much progress. There’s one company in Ireland which has been working on this technology for years now but their product still remains unfinished.
They could generate some heat by burning the paper used to bring us into this PESCO military alliance .
I bought a house with a pellet boiler last year which I subsequently disposed of and replaced with gas for a number of reasons. One of the things that amazed me was that pellets aren’t any cheaper than oil or gas for heating your house per kilowatt hour when you do the maths. I rang a few installers to see if one of them wanted to buy it who all told me the same story – they were more popular about ten years ago and now a lot of folks who got them in have had them taken back out again. An incentive or grant wouldn’t go astray here in driving uptake.
@Sean: yeah I would welcome something on the cost of wood pellets myself!! It’s not much cheaper unless you have an extremely well insulated house. And solar tubes.
@Fergal Barry: So my problem was always with my with Solar Tubes?
Don’t worry blankets will be rationed out by approved retailers to suitable subscribers. If it is anything like the scam over grants for condensing boilers they can keep it.
Lessons have been learned. Our politicians will make a bigger balls of it than theirs did. Ours have a much more polished technique when it comes to self interest and gouging.
Fg has learned from the DUP how not to be caught.
I burning pallets in my stove do qualify ,ha
Falling around the place laughing at this story! This from a government that directly subsidises peat fired power stations and the biggest power station in Ireland is coal fired! As for wind power the brakes are well and truly on that because the governments landowner friends blocked any significant wind farms at sea. After all, large wind farms at sea are not going to pay BIG rent to landowners!
Where is the legislation on mandatory buying of electricity from anyone who produces it…?
@Colm Molloy: ESB have a monolopy and they want to keep it that way.
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