The Heating and Hotwater Industry Council (HHIC) is demanding that the government makes a decision on the Feed-in Tariff (FIT).
It comes after the Department of Energy and Climate Change confirmed that it would be consulting on “further cost-control measures relating to the FiT scheme”, while failing to provide any form of timeline.
Stewart Clements, director of HHIC said “We need a decision one way or another; businesses are unable to make investment decisions with this uncertainty hanging over them.
“The Tories claim to be a party for business, yet here is an example of it failing to understand the implications of its lack of action. It wouldn’t be so bad if we at least had an inkling of when the decision might be made.”
The FiT is a payment made to households or businesses that generate their own electricity through the use of methods that do not contribute to the depletion of natural resources, proportional to the amount of power generated.
Stewart continued: “We are all looking to reduce energy bills for consumers and lower carbon emissions for home heating and FIT plays a major role in encouraging people to switch to technologies that do just this.
“MicroCHP, currently covered by FIT, works by operating at times of peak demand on the national grid, helping to reduce pressure and support the grid through electricity export and as the electricity is produced at the point of use it means that there isn’t any loss during transportation making the system extremely efficient.
“To achieve economies of scale at a manufacturing level and thus reduce costs to consumers, hundreds of thousands of pounds needs to be invested, yet manufacturers are understandably reluctant to make this level of investment until market demand increases; this is where FIT plays an important role.”