£500,000 loan scheme to help Scots go green

A NEW £500,000 interest-free loan scheme could help householders install green energy generating equipment - and get paid for doing so.

Loans from the Scottish Government will be available for a range of renewable heat and electricity technologies, such as heat pumps, solar panels and micro-wind turbines.

The scheme will open on 1 April and loans will be capped at 2,000.

Householders installing elec-tricity technologies will be eligible for payments for feeding electricity into the national grid.

The money will also help domestic customers who have been excluded from support by the UK government's renewable heat incentive until next year, to install such equipment.

Scotland's energy minister Jim Mather said: "Scotland is going greener and the wide take up of small-scale technologies will be vital to become a truly low- carbon economy.

"There has never been a better time to save energy and go green."