Low Carbon Building Programme

The Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) was a payments system in England, Scotland and Wales. The UK Government programme was administered by BERR (formerly the DTI) and ran from 1 April 2006 until its closure to new applications on 24 May 2010. The scheme was replaced by the Renewable Heat Incentive in November 2011.

The LCBP offered grants towards the cost of installing domestic microgeneration technologies and larger scale distributed generation installations for public buildings and businesses, subject to energy conservation standards being met. The programme was split into two phases - phase one, managed by the Energy Saving Trust, divided into two streams, provided grants for householders under stream 1, and grants for businesses under stream 2. Phase two, launched in 2007 and managed by the Building Research Establishment, provided grants for public sector, charitable and third sector organisations.

Grants were only offered to installations using products and installers either on "Clear Skies" lists or products and installers assessed and certificated to robust standards under the new Microgeneration Certification Scheme mark (or its equivalent, for products). The first company in the United Kingdom, to install a solar heating system under the Clear Skies Grant Scheme was Eco-Exmoor Ltd.

Grants were 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, was well below demand. In January 2007 funds were exhausted within 12 days, and in March 2007 within 75 minutes.

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

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

Funding for the LCBP was originally set at £30 million for the first three years. £6.5m of this was allocated for domestic installations, £4m for community installations and £18m for others, 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.

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