Another massive cost of trying to achieve the Kyoto promise.........
The Department of Energy & Climate Change (oh what a presumptive title) has proposed that Taxpayers' money should be further redistributed, via the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme.
The Treasury (using our taxes) is to pay to anyone 9p/kWh for heat generated using a small (less than 45kW) solid biomass boiler.
The payment will be based on a 'deemed' output based on what the installed system will be expected to deliver, if the property is well insulated. [Cue for the creation of an Assessing Quango; and, the Training of Assessors Quango - someone has to be paid to 'deem' all these systems.] Payment will continue for a guaranteed 15 years.
Will the scheme be policed & monitored to prevent unscrupulous claimants stealing taxpayers' money? [Cue another 'Monitoring' quango.]
Will the final installation be inspected to prevent a fraudster claiming they've installed a solid biomass boiler when they haven't? [More inspectors?]
What's to prevent a fraudster claiming they're running a solid biomass boiler (with it's labour-intensive hassle) & getting paid 9p/kWh, when in fact an installed biomass boiler lies idle whilst they use their fully-automatic gas boiler that costs them only 3.202 p/kWh at Tier 2 prices?
Does biomass save any CO2? Will it continue to do so in 14 years when all our forests that take 25 - 30 years to grow, have been cut down & burnt? How much CO2 is expended cultivating / growing / using energy to cut it down & transport it to a processing plant many miles away (remember, all the 'local' trees were cut down in the early years) / using energy to regularly transport truck-loads from processing plant to consumer etc?
The Clean Air Act 1993 states "Dark smoke shall not be emitted from a chimney of any building, and if, on any day, dark smoke is so emitted, the occupier of the building shall be guilty of an offence." Why does DECC encourage (by subsidy) the use of a potentially polluting fuel that will inevitably contravene CAA 1993?
There's also the irony of using "Kiln-dried timber" as a CO2-reducing fuel source.
Contributed by JoePublic
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