Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that electricity generated from renewable sources takes priority over energy generated from other sources.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
The way in which the electricity market and renewable support schemes operate means that renewable electricity generators have effective priority to generate as they generally have very low operating costs.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to increase the production of electricity from onshore wind.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
Over 12GW of installed onshore wind capacity was operational in the UK at the end of the second quarter of 2017. This deployment was supported by schemes such as the Renewables Obligation (RO), which are funded by bill payers.
Further onshore wind farms are expected to deploy up to March 2019 with support from the RO, utilising grace periods provided for in the Energy Act 2016 and the Renewables Obligation Closure Order (Northern Ireland) 2016 and the Renewables Obligation Closure (No.2) Order (Northern Ireland) 2016. In addition, around 690MW of onshore wind capacity has been contracted to deploy under the Contracts for Different regime by 2019, which was established to replace the RO.