FAQs

The government accepts that the principle of grandfathering should also apply to such projects, but won’t incorporate this aspect until 2012.

Chapter 6 of the government’s RHI announcement says

Treatment of installations under construction during a review

Whilst grandfathering is intended to provide certainty to installations already accredited under the RHI, we are aware that the lead-in time for some projects can be a number of years and that changes to tariff levels between financial close and completion could mean that the financial assumptions upon which they would have started the project would no longer hold. Equally, if as a result of a review, tariff levels will be raised it could result in projects, which are due to come on line ahead of the review being implemented, stalling until the tariff levels are raised so that they can take advantage of the higher level of funding. This could result in a hiatus in projects coming on line so affecting the levels of renewable heat generation in the short term.

However, we need to balance decisions on the levels of support for such projects against controlling costs for the scheme as a whole and the impacts that this could have on other projects coming forward. As the first scheduled review is not due to start until 2014 with implementation in 2015 we intend to consider this matter further with a view to any appropriate measures being included from 2012.