Asked by: Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their announcement in June that the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) will come into force from 1 January 2020 and that there will be five eligible low-carbon technology types for the proposed SEG Tariff, namely solar photovoltaic, wind, micro combined heat and power, and hydro and anaerobic digestion, whether eligible utilities will be required to offer a single SEG Tariff to community generators, regardless of generation type; or whether they will be required to offer one tariff for each technology type.
Answered by Lord Duncan of Springbank
The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) will require licensed suppliers with 150,000 and over domestic customers to provide at least one tariff offer to any eligible exporter, they are free to offer more than one tariff. Other suppliers may participate on a voluntary basis.
Suppliers will not be required to offer different tariffs for each technology type. In keeping SEG requirements as simple as possible, suppliers will have maximum flexibility to build on it, adapt and innovate – for example by tailoring tariffs to appeal to owners of various types of small-scale generation, as well as wider smart infrastructure such as electric vehicles and domestic-scale storage systems.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate she has made of the number of (a) hydrogen fuel cell and (b) micro combined heat and power technologies purchased by UK consumers in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Kwasi Kwarteng
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to his Department's Guidance on how to prepare for Brexit if there's no deal, what parts of the Government’s plan for generating low-carbon electricity in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal have been implemented.
Answered by Kwasi Kwarteng
The Government has passed legislation which will enable the continued operability of the Feed-in Tariffs scheme, Contracts for Difference scheme, and the Renewables Obligation in the event of a no deal exit from the EU.
In the Clean Growth Strategy, government confirmed it would be making up to £557 million (2011/12 prices) of annual support available for further Contracts for Difference, providing industry with the certainty they need to invest in new projects.
The Department’s guidance states that in a no deal scenario, the government has legislated to ensure that Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin issued in EU countries, including for combined heat and power will continue to be recognised. This will allow electricity suppliers to continue to use EU Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin and will ensure that existing supply contracts are not compromised, in so far as these contracts depend upon Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin. This position will be kept under review.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the most popular models of (a) electricity and (b) heat microgeneration in buildings throughout the UK.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
The Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) scheme supports solar, wind, hydro, anaerobic digestion and micro-combined heat and power technologies. On the basis of installations on Ofgem’s central FIT register, solar is the most popular method of electricity generation accounting for 99% of all installations (over 830,000) supported under the scheme.
The Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) supports biomass only boilers and biomass pellet stoves, air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps and solar thermal panels. The Domestic RHI has accredited over 69,000 applications for the residential microgeneration of heat. As of May 2019, air source heat pumps are the most popular method of heat microgeneration, making up 54% of total accredited applications. More deployment data can be found here.
It should be noted that there are some forms of microgeneration not covered by the RHI or FITs scheme.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 11 June 2019 to Question 258958 on Solar Power: VAT, which energy saving products will be subject to the proposed rise in VAT.
Answered by Jesse Norman
HMRC expect that the vast majority of energy saving materials will be unaffected by this change. This includes insulation, central heating or hot water system controls, solar panels, ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, micro combined heat and power units, and boilers designed to be fueled by vegetal matter.
Asked by: Bill Grant (Conservative - Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Government's January 2019 Clean Air Strategy, what assessment he has made of the (a) effect on air quality of the Renewable Heat Incentive programme and (b) implications of that effect for the future of that programme.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
Biomass Boilers supported under the RHI scheme must meet strict air quality and feedstock sustainability rules. The air quality requirements ensure applicants for both RHI schemes with a biomass boiler (including Combined Heat and Power) will need to have emissions levels no higher than 30 grams per gigajoule (g/GJ) net heat input for particulate matter (PM) and 150g/GJ for oxides of nitrogen (NOx), which are the two main pollutants.
In the Clean Air Strategy, the Government committed to consult on removing Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme support for new biomass installations in urban areas which are on the gas grid. The Government published the consultation Renewable Heat Incentive: Biomass Combustion in Urban Areas in May 2018, seeking views on a number of proposals including the removal of RHI support for some or all new biomass boilers in urban areas, imposing geographical restrictions on biogas combustion and introducing regular maintenance checks on existing biomass boilers under the RHI. The consultation also contains an assessment of the impacts of this policy change. We will be publishing a government response to this consultation shortly.
Asked by: Lord Bruce of Bennachie (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to encourage the installation of domestic combined heat and power systems.
Answered by Lord Henley
Government has encouraged the installation of domestic micro-combined heat and power systems (with an electrical capacity of 2 kilowatts or less) through the Feed-in Tariffs scheme which was introduced in April 2010.
Asked by: Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much of the Feed-in Tariff budget was committed in each year from 2015 to 2018; and how much of that budget was allocated to (1) wind, (2) solar, (3) hydro, (4) biomass, (5) anaerobic digestion, and (6) micro-combined heat and power in each of those years.
Answered by Lord Henley
The amount of budget committed to each wind band can be calculated using publicly available data.
Total capacity deployed for each technology over the period 2016 – 2018 is published under the Feed-in Tariff Deployment Caps Monthly Reports.
Total generation can be calculated by applying the load factors (published in the impact assessment that accompanied the 2015 Feed-in Tariffs review) to the total capacity.
In order to calculate the value of the generation tariff payments made to each band, the total amount of generation per quarter is multiplied by the corresponding tariff rates available on Ofgem’s website.
Asked by: Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the total amount of the Feed-in Tariff budget which is currently (1) committed, and (2) expected to be deployed in the current financial year for (a) wind, (b) solar, (c) hydro, (d) biomass, (e) anaerobic digestion, and (f) micro-combined heat and power.
Answered by Lord Henley
Following the review of the Feed-in Tariffs (FIT) scheme in 2015 a maximum overall budget of £100m from January 2016 to 31 March 2019 was introduced which is enforced through quarterly deployment caps. Deployment is tracked by Ofgem based on the total installed capacity of new installations registered on the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) database and their records of applications for ROO-FIT accreditation.
The amount of budget committed to each technology (biomass is not supported under the FIT scheme) can be calculated using publicly available data using the following methodology. Total capacity deployed for each technology over the period 2016 – 2018 is published under the Feed-in Tariff Deployment Caps Monthly Reports. Available on Ofgem’s website. Total generation can be calculated by applying the load factors (published in the impact assessment that accompanied the 2015 Feed-in Tariffs review) to the total capacity.
Finally, to calculate the value of the generation tariff payments made to each technology band, the total amount of generation per quarter is multiplied by the corresponding tariff rates available on Ofgem’s website.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Question to the Wales Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, what estimate he has made of the total value of UK Government funded renewable energy projects that have been cancelled in Wales in the last three years.
Answered by Alun Cairns
On 19 October 2018, the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC) announced that it had terminated the contract for difference awarded to Station Yard CFD 1 during the second Contracts for Difference (CfD) allocation round in 2017. Station Yard is a 0.05MW Advanced Conversion Technology with Combined Heat and Power project located in Llangadog, Carmarthenshire. The project’s contract was terminated because it failed to make sufficient progress towards meeting its milestone requirement to demonstrate a commitment within one year of signing a CfD to deliver the project. It is estimated that had Station Yard been commissioned it would have received support of less than £70,000 (in 2017/18 prices) for electricity generated over the 15-year period of its contract.
A CfD is a private law contract between a generator and the LCCC, a government-owned company. CfDs are managed independently by the LCCC and decisions as to whether a generator has met its milestone requirement are for the LCCC. The milestone requirement is a contractual requirement. Failure to meet this requirement may result in a CfD being terminated.
The Government is not aware of any other renewable energy projects in receipt of funding from CfDs or other UK Government schemes that have been cancelled in Wales during this time period.