During Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) questions in the House of Commons on Thursday morning, Amber Rudd stated that the removal of pre-accreditation “could make it more difficult for community energy projects to deploy”.
Rudd defended the move and said FiT pre-accreditation “had to be removed as a matter of urgency in order to safeguard spends under the scheme”.
However, she offered community projects hope of a potential lifeline when she added: “As part of the review we are seeking views as to whether the scheme should be focussed towards specific groups or sectors which might, for example, include households or communities”.
The admission follows warnings from the Scottish and Welsh governments in August that a lack of clarity on support for renewable energy would cause community projects to stall.
The government announced last week it would axe pre-accreditation for projects applying for support through the FiT scheme, effectively blocking developers from securing an agreed subsidy rate before costly permitting applications and construction begins.
The removal of pre-accreditation is the latest in a series of moves scaling back subsidies to renewable technologies as the govenrment aims to regain control of its spending, which overshot the £7.6 billion Levy Control Framework budget by £1.5 billion.