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 list the capacity market contracts awarded for fossil fuel generation.

A full list of Capacity Market (CM) agreements awarded in each CM auction since 2014 can be found in the annual auction results reports published on the Electricity Market Reform Delivery Body (EMR DB) website (https://www.emrdeliverybody.com/CM/Auction-Results-1.aspx). Additionally, the EMR DB publishes CM registers containing current information on CM agreements for each delivery year. These can be filtered by fuel type and are also on the EMR DB website (https://www.emrdeliverybody.com/CM/Registers.aspx).

The CM’s role is to provide security of supply by guaranteeing that we have sufficient capacity to manage with even the highest peaks in electricity demand at the least cost to electricity consumers. The CM is technology neutral as it does not seek to procure specific volumes of capacity from different types of technology. All types of capacity can participate, including renewable technologies, storage, and demand side response.

We have recently taken steps to better align the CM with our net zero ambitions. Wind and solar technology have been permitted to participate in the CM from 2019 onwards. Carbon emissions limits were also introduced to apply to all auctions from 2020 onwards. This means that new build plants that exceed these limits have been excluded from competing in auctions from 2020; and existing plants that exceed the limits will be excluded from being awarded agreements for all delivery years from 1 October 2024. As a result, the 2021 four-year-ahead (T-4) auction marked the first time that coal plants did not participate or secure agreements in a CM auction, and they will be unable to do so in any future T-4 auction.