Low Carbon Building Programme

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) is a Government programme in the United Kingdom. It offers grants towards the cost of installing domestic microgeneration technologies and larger scale distributed generation installations for public buildings and businesses, provided energy conservation standards are also met. Grants are normally in to 10 to 50% range, according to the applicant and the technology, and are considered on a first-come-first-served basis.

The LCBP commenced on April 1, 2006, is expected to last for 6 years, and is to be managed by the Energy Saving Trust. It replaced two earlier schemes, the 'Major Photovoltaics Demonstration programme', which assisted with photovoltaic installations, and the 'Clear Skies' programme, which aided other microgeneration installations.

The Government were criticised by the photovoltaic industry for ending the PV programme 6 years early [1], and also for allowing a funding gap to develop between the old and new programmes, which caused significant disruption to the renewables industry [2] [3].

[edit] Funding

Initial Government funding of £30 million was announced, to be made available over the first three years [4]. £6.5 million of this is allocated for domestic installations, £4 million for community installations and £18 for others [5], while £1.5 was reallocated to fund the earlier programmes try to plug the gap between them ending of the earlier programmes and the start of the LCBP.

A further £50 million was announced in the April 2006 budget, although as of September 2006 details of this are unclear. It may have been made in response to criticism of the initial funding levels which, at £9.5 million per year, was less than the £11.25 per year allocated to the earlier schemes (taking into account the 1.5m used to plug the gap) [6] [7].