FAQs
What uses of heat are eligible?
The RHI only applies to useful heat applications and excludes the production of heat for electricity generation.
Chapter 3 of the government's RHI announcement says
Eligible Uses of Heat
The RHI will only support useful heat. It is not practical to provide an exhaustive list of all the acceptable heat uses which will be eligible. Instead, we can outline the broad principles of what we want to support:
- The utilisation of useful heat;
- 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;
- This heat load should be an existing or new heating requirement i.e. not created artificially, purely to claim the RHI; and
- Acceptable heat uses are space, water and process heating where the heat is used in fully enclosed structures.
The only exception to this approach is for biomethane injection, where we will not specify how the biomethane should be used, given it will be injected into the existing gas grid.
Ofgem will determine what constitutes an ineligible heat use in accordance with the RHI regulations.
