Low Carbon Building Programme

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The Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) is a Government programme in the United Kingdom administered by BERR (formerly the DTI). 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. The programme is split into two phases - phase one, which is further divided into two streams, provides grants for householders under stream 1, and grants for businesses under stream 2. Phase two provides grants for public sector, charitable and third sector organisations.

Grants are only offered to installations using products and installers either on "Clear Skies" lists (until further notice) or products and installers assessed and certificated to robust standards under the new Microgeneration Certification Scheme mark (or its equivalent, for products).

The programme commenced on April 1, 2006. Phase one is managed by the Energy Saving Trust. Phase two, launched in 2007 is managed by the Building Research Establishment.

Grants are normally in the 10 to 50% range, according to the applicant and the technology. Funding for domestic schemes, restricted to £500,000 per month and allocated on a first-come-first served basis, is well below demand. In January 2007 funds were exhausted within 12 days [1], and in March 2007 within 75 minutes [2].

Although funding in the 2007 financial year is also to be increased, as detailed below, there were no domestic grant allocations in April 2007 as the scheme was suspended while it was restructured [3]. The suspension lead to a sudden drop in demand and job losses in the industry [4].

The revised domestic scheme, launched on May 29, 2007, cut the maximum grant by 50% to £2,500, and requires the householder to complete the works within strict time limits [5].

1 Government funding
2 Previous schemes
3 See also
4 External links
- 4.1 News items

[edit] Government funding

Funding for the LCBP was originally set at £30 million for the first three years [6]. £6.5m of this is allocated for domestic installations, £4m for community installations and £18m for others [7], while £1.5m was reallocated to plug the financial gap that appeared between the earlier programmes ending and the start of the Low Carbon Building Programme.

A further £50 million was announced in the April 2006 budget, which was used to establish phase two of the programme. Phase two uses a framework of suppliers and products which must be used by applicants when applying for a grant. The framework was established through an OJEU tender process, with the intention of providing certainty to the industry and further reducing technology costs through economies of scale.

The schemes replace by the Low Carbon Building Programme were also seen as being under funded, with only £45m having been invested in them. The Solar PV programme was originally intended to ‘establish the UK as a credible player.... alongside Germany and Japan’, however in 2004 the UK installed 2.5MW of photovoltaic electricity capacity, compared to over 300MW in Germany [8].

On March 21, 2007, it was announced in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget Statement that the funding of grants for homes would be increased again to £18 million pounds in the new financial year [9] for a new, restructured, scheme [10].

[edit] Previous schemes

The Low Carbon Building Programme 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 [11], and also for allowing a funding gap to develop between the old and new programmes, which caused significant disruption to the renewables industry [12] [13].