FAQs
What is degression?
Degression is an automatic reduction in tariff levels for systems installed in the future as described here.
Chapter 6 of the government's RHI announcement says
Degression
Under the degression approach, once triggered, support levels would automatically drop by a given percentage for new projects accredited under the scheme. Existing projects would retain their current level of support and so would be unaffected.
Degression will be built into the legislation and so allow tariff levels to be reduced in a controlled but timely manner in order to, as far as possible, manage costs.
Degression will only be triggered when a particular pre-set point is reached, for example, megawatt hours of generation or megawatts of installed capacity. This means that, should the renewable heat market need more time to develop, degression would not start prematurely; but equally, should uptake be higher than expected, degression will start sooner and will help ensure costs are controlled.
We intend to introduce degression in 2012 and the details of how it will work will be subject to consultation. The use of degression may need to vary between the different tariffs as the impacts of this approach may be different depending on the size and technology which it is applied to.
