The UK’s leading renewable energy organisations have urged the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to review “urgently” its decision to remove preliminary accreditation from the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) process.
The FiT removal, which came into force on Thursday this week, October 1, means that developers are “no longer able to register for financial support under the scheme, at a specific level, before they start generating”.
“This change has removed access to the FiT from individuals, farmers, businesses, investors and communities looking to generate their own power,” said the UK’s seven leading representative organisations.
“As a result, hundreds of projects, millions of pounds of investment and many thousands of jobs have been put at risk. It also has the reverse impact of what the Government seems to intend, by pushing up costs.”
The seven organisations believe the removal of pre-accreditation was deeply flawed, that no impact assessment was provided by DECC and that insufficient time was allowed for a proper consideration of the proposal.
“Since the Government’s decision to remove pre-accreditation, DECC has launched a root and branch FiT review which envisages fundamental changes to tariffs and caps on levels of deployment,” said the seven.
“The Government has indicated that pre-accreditation could be reintroduced as part of future proposals. Since it is unclear how the scheme can operate without a pre-accreditation system, we would like to see a clear statement from Government about the use of new pre-accreditation controls as part of any revised scheme.
“It is unfortunate that we have so far been unable to establish meaningful engagement with DECC on this matter. We would therefore urge DECC to expedite meaningful engagement between ourselves, the Secretary of State and her advisors in the coming weeks. We desire to work in a spirit of co-operation with Government and find a route forwards that allows many more people to benefit from installing renewables on their rooftops, farms or businesses, while helping to manage costs for all consumers.”
The seven are:
- Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association
- Community Energy England
- Regen SW
- Renewable Energy Association
- RenewableUK
- Scottish Renewables
- Solar Trade Association
