Yesterday, (17th December), DECC announced the details of its Feed in Tariff Scheme review, confirming that subsidies will be cut by 64%, a significant figure, but not quite as much as the 84% predicted. Under the new tariffs, there will be a 4.8% rate of return for solar, 5.9% for wind, and 9.2% for hydro.
FiTs days are numbered, however, and DECC confirmed it would cap new spending at £100m by the end of 2018/19 as set out in the consultation. Government also announced it would reintroduce pre-accreditation for solar PV and wind generators over 50kW, as well as all hydro and anaerobic digestion plants, after scrapping the mechanism in September.
FiTs review overview:
- No additional funds for FiTs overall, keeping with £100m.
- Domestic tariff of 4.39p
- Commercial tariff (250kW) of 2.70p
- Stand-alone tariff of 0.87p
- Caps of a total 87MW per quarter.
- Pre-accreditation to be reintroduced for >50kW solar.
- New tariffs to be brought in on 8th February.
Renewables Obligation:
DECC are planning on closing the <5MW RO as originally proposed. A banding review, proposed at 0.8 ROCs will come into effect from 1st June 2016. Grandfathering will be removed as initially proposed, with a significant financial grace period providing protection against this practice and also against the new bandings.
Industry reaction:
Paul Barwell, CEO of the Solar Trade Association said: “Government has partially listened. It’s not what we needed, but it’s better than the original proposals, and we will continue to push for a better deal for what will inevitably be a more consolidated industry with fewer companies.”
“However, in a world that has just committed to strengthened climate action in Paris and which sees solar as the future, the UK Government needs to get behind the British solar industry. Allocating only around 1% of its clean power budget to new solar is too little, particularly when solar is now so cost-effective. Poor ambition for solar risks missing out on not only our renewable energy targets in the UK, but on the world’s greatest economic opportunity too.”
“The industry will certainly try its hardest but we will be pressing Government to do much more to boost solar power.”
BPVA Chairman, Reza Shaybani: "The announcements made today shows that due to our hard lobbying the Government has listened to the sensible arguments, facts and figures we have put forward as an industry. This was a very hard set of discussions with ministers & department and there was huge inflexibility at the beginning. While it is not a perfect scenario, but it is better than what was proposed. Clearly there has been some movement from the draconian proposals in September in particular, some thought the £100 m would not be extra money after January but now it is and the original proposal on caps has been changed.
“In my view this should be a wakeup call for the industry to start working on business models where we don’t rely on subsidies any longer. The combination of solar and energy storage will deliver that in not too distant future. There is going to be a big discussion in government about battery storage and that will be a big debate in 2016."
For more details of the consultation outcome, click here.