The Tories pre-election manifesto promised to halt the spread of new onshore wind turbines, but details on how the government plan to claw back funds from the sector emerged for the first time in weekend news reports.
A government spokesman told The Telegraph that both the RO and Feed-in-tariff regimes would be reformed, potentially hitting around 7GW of proposed projects, because a government subsidy is “no longer appropriate” in light of falling technology costs within the sector.
The subsidy cut could derail the plans for 7GW of unconsented capacity, but Government says there is “enough”. The UK already has 9.5GW of wind capacity installed with a further 5.2GW with planning consent which should meet the government’s aims of securing 11-13GW of wind capacity by 2020, even if not all consented wind farms move forward.
“Looking at what has already had planning permission, there is enough onshore wind to contribute what’s needed to reach the ambition set out in the coalition government’s renewables roadmap that 30 per cent of our electricity should come from renewables by 2020,” a Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) spokesman told The Telegraph.
“We have supported new technologies when they’ve been a good deal for the consumer – providing start-up funding and certainty about future payments to help them become competitive. However, those subsidies won’t continue when costs come down – that’s not value for money for billpayers in the long run,” the Decc spokesman said.
Although the RO might close for new projects, developers will still be able to compete for subsidy payouts through the government’s Contracts for Difference (CfD) regime. Many projects with a March 2017 start date or later would need to have pursue a CfD regardless of the government’s latest plans as the RO scheme winds down.
New energy secretary Amber Rudd has already promised to change the legislation to “put local people back in charge” by requiring all projects to have local consent, which was outlined in the Queen’s speech last week.
Further details on the proposals are expected to be revealed this week.