Published at 09:44, Friday, 05 March 2010

THE weather boffins can’t decide if this winter is a record-breaker or not but one thing is certain – our home heating bills are due to hit some impressive highs.

Carbon neutral: Heating bills will be no problem for future residents of Delaware House.

How nice it would be to get some help with those bills, and doubly nice if the cash came from the government?

This may sound like a lot of hot air but since last month a new Government scheme has promised exactly that – money back to help with heating costs, but only for the “green”.

The Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (RHIS) will help offset the cost of installing renewable-energy heating systems by paying homeowners a fixed annual tariff based on the amount of heat they use. These payments could be as much as £2,000 each year for 23 years, depending on which eco-friendly system is installed.

Payments will go to those with solar thermal hot water systems, biomass boilers and air source heat pumps fitted since July last year. And the top technology to qualify for the full 23 years of RHIS payments is the Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP).

A GSHP works like a refrigerator in reverse. A network of underground pipes absorbs the slightest amount of warmth in the soil, and a heat exchanger transfers this free heating to the house. As long as a home is well-insulated, a GSHP is a very effective and economical way of keeping it warm.

For Tim Anderson, of Corbridge-based Dockleaf Developments, installing GSHPs in new homes is a no-brainer. He has been a keen fan of the technology for several years, and his “green” priorities got his company shortlisted in last year’s “Property Oscars” – the 2009 North East Renaissance Awards sponsored by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

But Tim has been puzzled by the Government’s lukewarm promotion of eco-technology up to now.

In 2007, Tim’s firm failed to win a grant from the Department of Trade and Industry’s Low Carbon Buildings Programme despite ticking all the “green” boxes, and he was never told why. He could not understand why the Government was not doing more to encourage builders to install renewable energy in new housing schemes.

“They seem to think that it is wrong to support commercial organisations, but that is totally missing the point,” said Tim.

“For a developer to install, for example, a ground source heat pump, it increases the build costs and therefore reduces profit.

“A Government grant would simply share some of this burden, and the environment would benefit. But grants to encourage builders and developers to install these types of technologies are almost non-existent.”

But Tim went ahead last year with his small development of GSHP-heated homes in Medburn near Ponteland, and those completed houses are ideal for the new RHIS (Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme).

Take Delaware House, now for sale at Medburn. Its state-of-the-art ground source heat pump for heating and hot water means whoever buys it would get between £1,500 and £2,000 annually when the RHIS begins to pay out in April 2011. That’s around £40,000 over 23 years. This payment should more than cover the heating bills for Delaware House.

This is the boost that Tim was hoping for. Though the RHIS does not directly go to the builder, it may make his houses easier to sell.

Tim said: “Developers need to be made to sit up and see the alternatives. And houses that incorporate renewable energy capacity ought to sell more easily, due to the ongoing savings that the house buyer will realise in the form of lower bills.”

Tim still believes the Government should offer serious grants directly to house builders, to encourage more of them to install renewable energy measures in their developments. The building industry is enduring the effects of recession but cannot make tight budgets the excuse for saying “no” to “eco”.

And if the Government is not offering many carrots it has lined up several sticks. Since May 2008, private developers must have their homes rated against the Code for Sustainable Homes, which dictates that every new home has its energy efficiency and environmental sustainability measured against nine design criteria linked to building regulations.

This year those rules will be tightened, and they will be cranked up again in 2013. By 2016, all new houses will have to rate “zero carbon” –when the Government has come up with an agreed definition of the term – giving a whole new meaning to the term “carbon dating”.

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk