Asked by: Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the industrial benefits of solar power.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
Solar power is a UK success story, with rapid deployment over the last 7 years. Latest figures indicate that we now have over 12.5GW of solar capacity installed in the UK, enough to power over 2.7 million homes and exceeding our historic projections.
Costs for solar installations have fallen rapidly during this period, allowing both domestic and industrial consumers to benefit from increasingly cheap and clean electricity. We expect subsidy-free solar to be an increasingly attractive option, with the first subsidy-free UK solar farm recently deploying. Some of the UK’s largest solar developers have said that they will be installing and connecting subsidy-free sites over the next 12 months.
Asked by: Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what his policy is on circumstances in which the special share in the Green Investment Bank (GIB) held by the Green Purposes Company Ltd can be used to approve or reject changes to GIB's green purposes as set out in the objects of its Articles of Association.
Answered by Claire Perry
Following the sale of the Green Investment Bank (GIB), should the company wish to amend, remove or alter the green objective within the objects of its Articles of Association, it must seek written approval from the Green Purposes Company Limited (GPC), which holds a special share in GIB (now called the Green Investment Group (GIG)).
The five trustees of GPC, who are independent of Government and the GIG, will form a judgement on the proposed amendment, and will either approve or reject the change to ensure that the green mission of the GIG is not weakened.
Asked by: Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make it his Department's policy to implement the Department of Energy and Climate Change's commitment to feed-in tariff deployment cap top-ups, set out in its review of the feed-in tariffs scheme, published in December 2015.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government response to the 2015 review of the scheme set out that a budget reconciliation process could be biannual, or more or less frequent, depending on deployment. As well as our current consultation on support for anaerobic digestion and micro-combined heat and power under the scheme, we are reviewing the deployment that has taken place since the revised scheme was re-launched in February of this year and will make a statement in due course.
Asked by: Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reason his Department has not implemented the Department of Energy and Climate Change's commitment to a biannual budget reconciliation process for the new feed-in tariff scheme, set out in its review of that scheme in December 2015.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government response to the 2015 review of the scheme set out that a budget reconciliation process could be biannual, or more or less frequent, depending on deployment. As well as our current consultation on support for anaerobic digestion and micro-combined heat and power under the scheme, we are reviewing the deployment that has taken place since the revised scheme was re-launched in February of this year and will make a statement in due course.
Asked by: Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he plans to retain solar thermal under the Renewable Heat Incentive for (a) domestic and smaller commercial heating applications and (b) new applications including space heating and community heating.
Answered by Jesse Norman
In March the Department for Energy and Climate Change published a consultation “The Renewable Heat Incentive: A reformed and refocused scheme”, including proposals relating to solar thermal.
The Government is currently considering responses to the consultation and will announce its final proposals in due course.
Asked by: Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he plans to take to improve the performance of the feed-in tariff scheme for solar power; and what the timetable for such improvements is.
Answered by Jesse Norman
Solar has been deployed rapidly in recent years from low levels with almost 11 GW of capacity now installed.
Changes to the Feed-in Tariff scheme were introduced in 2016 to manage costs and ensure value for money. While it is appropriate to allow for a period of stability following these changes, we continue to keep the performance of the scheme under review.