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Jan 30
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“Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself.”
From a purely statistical point of view the Supreme Court only grants 1 in 3 applications for permission to appeal.
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Jan 25
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Appearing on Channel 4 News this evening Greg Barker, DECC minister, said:
The month on month installations rose by 300%, month on month, between June and October.
at 0:54 of the clip.
This is not a very accurate description of what was happening with PV installations last summer.
The statistics, as provided by DECC themselves, are:
Month no. of installs % increase June 8,192 July 12,764 56% August 12,767 0% September 14,581 14% October 23,731 63%
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Jan 25
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Today the Appeal Judges, Lord Justices Moses, Lloyd and Richards, handed down their judgement on the appeal by DECC against the earlier finding, by Justice Mitting, that DECC had acted unlawfully when setting an effective date for a change to FiT tariffs that preceded the date upon which the amended legislation would come into effect.
DECC were first granted permission to appeal and then the appeal itself was refused.
In his findings Moses LJ summed up by saying:
The quest, in my view, is to identify a clear Parliamentary intention to take away an existing entitlement to a fixed rate of return for capital investment incurred by a small-scale low-carbon generator. The question, I respectfully suggest, is not whether the proposed modification may have a significant adverse impact on those proposing to install small solar systems once the proposal was announced, but rather whether Parliament conferred a power to make a modification with such a retrospective effect. It did not.
DECC seem to have decided to fight on to the bitter end by lodging an appeal with the Supreme Court. A step that seems to clearly contradict their announced intention of getting the solar industry back on its feet again.
This action is now presumably forced on them by the rumours of legal action by the gathering groups of disgruntled investors who cancelled projects after the announcement of the proposed changes at the end of last year, when they found that their projects were unlikely to be able to meet the immediate target of completion by the 12th December deadline.
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Jan 19
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DECC have confirmed that they have today laid a draft of the new Standard Licence Conditions before Parliament.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/fits_jan12upd/fits_jan12upd.aspx
21p for installations from 3rd March.
Systems installed between now and then will get 43.3p if DECC lose their court case or 21p if they win.
Barker heralded this, saying: “In the circumstances we believe this gives the industry as much certainty as is possible.”
And, despite what Huhne has said, this is DECC pretty much admitting that the entire consultation process is a complete sham. DECC have no intention of doing anything other than what they want to do.
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Jan 08
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DECC have found an extra £197 million to add to the existing £867 million FiTs ‘spending cap’ (aka ‘budget’) to address the large recent increase in installed systems.
Although DECC have, unusually, not made any formal announcement (press release or ministerial comment) they have published an obscurely named Q&A document on their website – Control Framework for DECC levy-funded spending – dated 8th December 2011.
This shows that they have reallocated £197 million from the existing ROC ‘budget’ to the FiTs ‘spending cap’ on the basis that this amount was originally allocated to be paid to sub-5MW systems, over the same period as is covered by the £867 million FITs ‘cap’, to March 2015. This includes an increase in the current year of £14 million.
As ROCs for small systems was being paid at 9p per kWh this amount would have required the installation of 183MW of small PV systems in order to generate 155.5 GWh of electricity in the current financial year.
Given that the amount of small PV registered for ROCs, prior to April 2010, was a little less than 8.25 MW this seems an impossibly high figure when the incentive for homeowners would have been less than 25% of those available from FiTs payments.
PV installs in the first 12 months of the FiTs scheme (April 2010 – March 2011) came to 88 MW when the incentive was up to 41.3p.
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Jan 04
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DECC have today lodged an appeal against last month’s judgement that their FiTs consultation should be subject to Judicial Review.
A decision is not expected before the end of the month, although this is in the hands of the court system.
A copy of the appeal document is available here.
DECC’s grounds for appeal do not stand much scrutiny.
They are claiming that they must do what they are doing in order to secure the maximum level of future PV installations (which is in line with their obligation under the Energy Act 2008). How can that be achieved with a decimated solar industry?
They also seem to have conveniently forgotten that the entire intent of the FiTs scheme was just to incentivise early adopters so that future costs of PV could be reduced and that future installations could be achieved at a market cost that then would not require any FiTs sibsidy. That is to say, the FiTs scheme was designed so as to remove its own need to exist. The only unanswered (and now probably unanswerable) question is whether £867 million is enough to achieve that goal.
If it is enough then it is arguable that it doesn’t matter how many households actually benefit in the short term, as everyone will be able to benefit (from lower prices) in the longer term.
If this argument is crucial to DECC’s point then it is also supports the argument that they should have reduced the tariffs earlier and that they are doing nothing more now than to try to minimise the effects of their incompetence.
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Jan 01
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And what news will the New Year bring for the Feed-in Tariff?
A quick review of where we are, now that the dust has settled after the frantic activity of the past couple of months, is in order. Can the FiTs continue?
Small scale PV currently installed (as per DECC MCS spreadsheet) is:
0-4kW – 623 MW
4-10kW – 40 MW
10-50kW – 94 MW
plus (unknown) amount over that at 30.7p
If each is going to generate at 850kWh/kWp then the annual FiTs costs are currently:
623 MW 531,250kWh @ 43.3.p = £229 million
40 MW 34,000kWh @ 37.8p = £13 million
94 MW 79.900kWh @ 32.9p = £26 million
Total £268 million per year. Plus 5% (or so) RPI added from April each year.
2012/13 £282 million
2013/14 £296 million
2014/15 £311 million
So, ignoring the costs for the current year, the next 3 years will cost a total of £889 million.
DECC’s notional ‘budget’ of £867 million for this period is well and truly blown even with no further installations. And this ignores all the large-scale PV that has been installed and all of the other technologies.
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Dec 22
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A small item tucked away in today’s EAC/ECC solar report is worth keeping an eye on, as it may cause some major realignment of DECC policy in the future.
81. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is yet to decide whether for National Accounts purposes the Feed-in Tariffs are deemed to be imputed ‘tax and spend’ and therefore included within the public finances. ONS is awaiting the results of a more general decision on the treatment of levy-funded subsidy schemes at the European Union level that would allow ONS to classify such schemes. In the absence of such a decision, DECC told us that:
Ministers took the view that they needed to make a judgment about where they thought that classification was likely to come out … based on information from decisions that the ONS has already made and its description of the factors that it takes into account in determining whether something counts as tax and spending.
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