The Northern Ireland Sustainable Energy Programme (NISEP) has been extended for a further year, casting confusion over the government’s proposals to replace it with the EnergyWise scheme consulted on earlier this year.
The current policy, which provides funding raised predominantly from businesses as well as homeowners to meet the cost of installing energy efficiency measures, was scheduled to end in March 2017.
The replacement EnergyWise scheme, which would have only been open to households despite still drawing funds from commercial entities, was slated for the following month.
However Northern Ireland’s Utility Regulator released a statement on 12 August announcing an extension to the current scheme following “a request from the minister for the economy”, Simon Hamilton.
Despite closing on 10 June, the Department for the Economy (DfE) has yet to publish a response to its EnergyWise consultation and no reason has yet been given over the delay to the new scheme.
A spokesperson for Utility Regulator told Clean Energy News: “The EnergyWise scheme was consulted on earlier in the year. Following the department looking at the responses to that consultation the minister requested that we extend NISEP for a year pending its final decision on EnergyWise.”
While they would not comment on the reason for the delay in this final decision, it was suggested that the proposals would need redressing in light of responses to the consultation.
Utility Regulator has stated that calls for schemes seeking funding will be issued in mid-September as normal and has added that there will be no further consultation on the 2017-18 NISEP extension.
It did however state that the amount of funding – roughly £8 million – would remain the same as would the method of collection. The majority of this comes from businesses, which are able to apply for the funding to pay for the cost of LED retrofits and other energy-saving schemes.
The EnergyWise proposals to remove businesses from eligibility for the scheme attracted heavy criticism from Manufacturing NI, which represents 550 manufacturing companies supporting over 214,000 jobs in the sector. It branded the plans “unfair and unwarranted” and chief executive Stephen Kelly has heaped more on the current state of policy decisions.
Speaking to The Irish News, he said: “A lot of questions remain about what is going to replace the scheme going forward.
“The replacement was consulted on and we were told six weeks ago that the department would be pressing ahead with it. Then on Friday afternoon, the regulator arbitrarily issued a statement saying NISEP would continue.
“Questions need to be answered such as where are the consultation responses to Energywise and why hasn’t there been any consultation on extending NISEP”.
DfE failed to respond to Clean Energy News over the lack of consultation or reasoning for NISEP’s extension, or the reason for the delay to the introduction of EnergyWise.
All companies licensed by the Utility Regulator in Northern Ireland are eligible to bid for funds under the new NISEP year, as well as other organisations that have met the required criteria and registered with the Programme Administrator, the Energy Saving Trust (EST), to become primary bidders.
The funding is available for energy efficiency schemes which must be implemented in the 2017-2018 programme year.
