The Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF) and the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) are reportedly in line for cuts in the upcoming autumn spending review.
Citing an ‘insider at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)’, the Financial Times reports that the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund and the Renewable Heat Incentive could pay the price after chancellor George Osborne slashed £70 million from DECC’s budget for the financial year 2015/16.
The FT suggests that the GDHIF could see a reduction in its £370 million budget over the next two years, with the scheme facing the possibility of being cancelled when it finished in its current guise in 2017. The RHI is also rumoured to be in the chancellor’s sights, despite the scheme’s lacklustre uptake.
Any cuts made to the RHI would face severe criticism from the clean tech sector, especially as the British government is currently falling behind in its attempt to produce at least 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Indeed, industry has called on the government to extend the RHI out to 2020.
DECC is facing a number of budgetary pressures, with analysis from Green Alliance suggesting that the budget cuts imposed by the chancellor could lower staffing levels by 90%. In addition, Amber Rudd, secretary of energy and climate change has confirmed that the Levy Control Framework is “considerably above budget” – something DECC is “looking carefully” at.
