They should have made it a lot harder to qualify for rhi then half the boilers put in are just wasting energy and costing the government 100s of thousands of poundsYes, they will be paying more out over the lifetime of the scheme, that what makes it a good investment. But the govt is already heavily borrowed, keeps telling us they ain't got no more money for roads, schools, hospitals etc, I very much doubt they'd have been able to stump up the funds up front as you suggest, doing it this way they can claim to be doing something and push the cost further down the road and at some time in the lifespan of the scheme they pretty much know it will become the oppositions problem but that's politics, it ain't like a business where you invest today for future savings as the future savings could end up in the hands of the opposition.