Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of lowering the market reference prices for the Contracts for Difference AR6 on the (a) budget that can be allocated to projects during the auction, (b) number of projects that can be awarded in that round and (c) total capacity that will be secured through AR6.

The reference prices we use for the Contracts for Difference budget are an output from the Department’s main power model and are characteristic of decarbonisation pathways that are net-zero consistent.

Budgets are set based on a wide range of factors such as an assessment of the pipeline of projects that could participate in the auction, rather than being a pre-determined monetary constraint. If reference prices were higher or lower, the budget would change accordingly, and approximately the same capacity would likely be successful in the auction.