Green gas industry responds to NAO renewable heat report

• Green gas is home-grown and reduces need for expensive natural-gas imports
• Industry echoes NAO call for govt. to address policy gap by providing long-term support for renewable heat and introducing effective carbon price
• Report says successor policy to RHI to be announced this year

Responding to a new report from the National Audit Office (NAO) on the cost-effectiveness of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), Charlotte Morton, Chief Executive of the Anaerobic Digestion & Bioresources Association, said:

“As one of the technologies supported by the RHI, biomethane (or green gas) is currently heating over 300,000 homes and displacing almost 800,000 tonnes of CO₂, the equivalent to taking almost a million cars off our roads. As a home-grown, renewable source of heat, it is helping to decarbonise the UK’s gas grid and improving energy security through reducing the need for expensive natural-gas imports from unstable parts of the world.

“With support for the RHI due to end in 2021, we’re calling on the government to put in place long-term support for renewable heat to help give certainty to the green gas industry. The government should also set an effective carbon price that would better demonstrate green gas’s excellent value for money in reducing emissions and producing home-grown renewable heat.”

Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said on the publication of the NAO’s RHI report:

“The government faces a huge challenge in cutting harmful carbon emissions. The NAO report shows how the government has massively cut back its ambitions for this scheme, and that as a result it will have to work even harder elsewhere.”

“But right now the government doesn’t know how it is going to cut carbon from heating systems in millions of homes and businesses around the country. There is a limited amount of time to work with, so it needs to start making real progress now.”

ADBA understands that some of the recommendations made in the report have already been incorporated into the RHI reforms that are currently going through Parliament, which, if passed, will give a vital boost to green gas production in the UK.

The report states that a decision on the successor policy to the RHI is due to be announced this year.