Government Releases First Wave Of ‘Clean Heat’ Funding

Last week, the government announced that the first portion of a fund worth £320 million would be released to local authorities supporting low-carbon urban heating projects, including the likes of biomass boiler heating.

According to Business Green, local authorities and public sector bodies now have until the end of November to apply for this first £39 million payout from the Heat Network Investment Project (HNIP).

As well as biomass boilers, other qualifying network schemes include commercial heat pumps and other methods to harness waste heat from factories and power plants.

The rest of the £320 million fund will be released over the next five years, with hopes that the investment will result in £2 billion in capital investment, and create heat networks around the UK which will be able to provide for some 400,000 homes.

Mike Reynold’s, director of energy giant SSE, says that the fund is an important incentive which could see a wave of change in investment in low-carbon energy sources: “The funding from BEIS is an important step in creating the right conditions for further heat networks to come to market and by bridging financial gaps and increasing the number of economically feasible projects,” he said.

For homeowners, the schemes also promise to lower bills through heating networks, with it being estimated that the likes of a district boiler costs 30 per cent less to run for a homeowner than an individual boiler.

In the UK, it’s estimated only two per cent of the population live in homes which use the concept of district heating, while over on the continent, in the likes of forward-thinking Denmark, 60 per cent of the population do