Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of guaranteeing the strike price to consumers of operational offshore wind sites in (a) 2015 and (b) 2017.

• The first Contract For Difference (CfD) allocation round results, published in 2015, saw over 1.2 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity secure contracts, estimated at the time of the auction to cost consumers just over £240 million per year (2012 prices).
• The second round results, announced in September 2017, saw the clearing price half for offshore wind delivered in the auction; we secured an additional 3.2 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity, estimated at the time of the auction to cost consumers just over £130 million per year (2012 prices).
• There are many factors that affect payments under these contracts, which mean that actual costs may go up or down.
• These results demonstrate that the UK is an attractive place to invest, with a record amount of renewable capacity secured to power our homes.
• The price of offshore wind clearing through the auction has halved in two years, demonstrating that competitive auctions are working well to drive down costs and deliver savings for consumers, whilst delivering the government’s decarbonisation ambitions.