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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what advice his Department has received on the lawfulness of excluding solar power from CfD auction rounds under state aid rules.

Solar PV has not been excluded from the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme. Under the scheme approved by the European Commission in 2014, and since 1 January 2017 when biomass conversion, which had been in a third group, was integrated into Group 1, technologies are grouped into either Group 1 or Group 2.

Solar PV is classed as a Group 1 technology so eligible solar PV projects would be able to compete for a CfD in an allocation round for these technologies.