It is a scheme run by the Department Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy to cut energy bills by investing efficient technologies and reduce emissions by bringing down the costs and risks associated with investing in deep decarbonisation technologies.
It is a £289 million fund running from now to 2025. It is trying to get funding and remove the risk to businesses who want to decarbonise.
It is for Companies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that are large users of energy in Industrial processes who want to decarbonise their energy processes. These includes industrial energy users switching fuels from fossil fuels to biomass and industrial wood waste.
The answer is mostly yes, it is a little complicated. For burning wood, it depends if the fuel is generated at the site where it is to be used.
For energy users where “The waste fuel is sourced from the lead applicant’s site or process(es)” are eligible. This covers everyone in the wood working industry burning their waste wood for energy.
For industrial site bringing in biomass generated offsite the picture is a little cloudier.
In the document announcing the phase two applications there is this.
Fossil Fuels –> Biomass where the applicant can
justify the reason for switching to this fuel
over other decarbonisation fuel
switching options within scope of the IETF.
So, what does this mean? There are several parts to this. If you are not generating your own wood waste and if your industrial process requires the “operational temperature of the industrial process(es) being heated is equal to or more than 240oC” and you are replacing a more “carbon intensive fuel”.
For decarbonisation deployment the project support starts from £100k-£30million project size and is 50% for large businesses 60% for medium and 70% for small businesses, and even more is your site is in an area of lesser economic advantage.
Now!!! The date is 15th of June as I write this and the applications are open for the 2nd phase until 9th of September 2022. There is another round available starting in October.
The best advice for this is to get in touch. There are some complicated criteria for this type of project so we would be happy to do an initial scoping meeting to work out what we can do for you.
For the full guidance here is the PDF from BEIS.
MATT LOCAL
