Allowable uses of heat

There are restrictions about how the tariff-eligible heat can be used

The RHI incorporates safeguards to ensure that it only supports the production of heat that is ‘useful’.

Eligible uses of heat

The government has not defined all the applications it considers ‘useful’ and therefore eligible. Instead it has given these general criteria:

This heat load should be an existing or new heating requirement i.e. not created artificially, purely to claim the RHI; and
The heat must be supplied to meet an economically justifiable heating requirement i.e. a heat load that would otherwise be met by an alternative form of heating e.g. a gas boiler;
Acceptable heat uses are space, water and process heating where the heat is used in fully enclosed structures.

It has also been specified that heat generated to provide cooling is eligible in some circumstances.

The criteria are not applied to biogas injection, as it is not possible to define how the gas is used, once it has been fed into the grid.

First the government has specifically excluded the following heat uses:

Beyond that it has left it to the scheme administrator Ofgem to rule on what other applications do not meet the above eligibility criteria.