A group of companies across the biomass supply chain have come together to draft a Biomass Charter which aims to “set the foundations for a meaningful collaboration with government on the decarbonsiation of domestic heating in the UK by 2030″.
The group believes that in order to achieve the UK’s ambitious decarbonsiation targets the UK needs to target the 4th Carbon Budget recommendation of deploying 1 million domestic biomass boilers by 2030.
The group has identified several key areas for collaboration, including the setting of Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) support for biomass boilers. The group will be lobbying the government to introduce a tariff of 15.4p/kWh for biomass boilers.
The Biomass Charter believes that a rate of 15.4p/kWh will sufficiently kick-start the domestic biomass boiler market. As part of the RHI structure, the group wants the government to outline a degression path for domestic biomass boilers that is in line with the 4th Carbon Budget projections.
The Biomass Charter is also urging the government to ensure that appropriate fuel sustainability criteria, air quality standards and energy efficiency eligibility requirements are implemented in order to reward best practice which will foster market confidence as a result.
The charter argues that the support of biomass boilers in the UK is incredibly important because the technology is particularly suited to large properties which form a substantial proportion of the housing stock in rural off-grid areas.
DECC closed the consultation over its plans for the domestic RHI in December last year. The department set out an initial RHI rate of just 5.2-8.7p/kWh – far below what the biomass industry believes is necessary to drive demand.