Government response to the Feed-in-Tariff consultation
The final package of changes to the FITs scheme has been announced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) today, following consultation in February this year. This is part of a comprehensive review designed to ensure value for money for the consumer and long term certainty for those who choose to invest.
The changes will affect tariffs for all newly eligible FITs technologies from 1 December 2012 onwards. Changes to solar tariffs, which have already been announced, will take place from 1 August 2012.
A degression mechanism will be introduced for anaerobic digestion (AD), wind and hydro from April 2014 in line with uptake of these technologies. Tariffs will be published two months before the degression date and will be based on publicly-available data. Decisions on the degression mechanism for solar were outlined in the Government response published on 24 May 2012.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said:
“I want to provide long term certainty for those choosing to invest in all forms of small scale green electricity generation, not just solar, and our changes to FITs will do just that.
“As well reducing tariffs over time for AD, hydro and small scale wind in line with uptake, we are introducing tariff guarantees for all technologies, great news for projects with long lead in times like hydro power.
DECC is introducing a system of preliminary accreditation so all AD and hydro installations and larger wind and PV installations (over 50 kW) will be able to know before construction that they will be accredited. It will also provide certainty over tariffs for six months to two years depending on the technology. This means that if a developer gets their project up and running within the tariff guarantee timescale, they will get the tariff that applied at the time they applied for preliminary accreditation.
The full response can be found here: DECC web page
For futher information please contact Greenspan
The green column in the table below shows the tariffs that will be introduced for new generators as of 1 December 2012. The consultation tariffs column is for reference only.
