Speaking to Utility Week, Greencoat UK Wind’s partner Stephen Lilley said: “Clearly we have got to a point where we have seen the government effectively wanting to cap and that’s perfectly fine.”
He added: “In fact for us, you could agree that it’s not a bad thing if there’s a limit of what gets built out, I don’t think it particularly matters to account shareholders.”
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) confirmed in June that it was scrapping the Renewables Obligation (RO) support for onshore wind by April next year, one year earlier than planned.
Decc also announced it was removing the Climate Change Levy exemption that renewable generation benefited from by August 2015, something analysts said could hit the value of the renewable investment fund by 3 per cent, although Greencoat said the impact was already factored into its forecasting from 2022.
Greencoat partner Laurence Fumagalli added the cuts are “a developer’s issue” and that the returns the fund makes on its wind portfolio will not be affected because of the grandfathering policy which protects the subsidies and the income for windfarms.
The company today announced a rise in profits of £9.1 million, up from £20.1 million at the same time last year.
The group’s investments were recorded as generating 10 per cent above budget for the first six months of the year due to higher than expected wind conditions, generating 408.0GWh.