Alan Whitehead
Main Page: Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)(9 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
1. What assessment she has made of the relative net financial benefit to the public purse of early closure of the renewables obligation using different cost methodologies.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
May I start by welcoming the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) to her Front-Bench role?
We estimate that closing the renewables obligation early to large and small-scale solar PV projects will reduce costs to the levy control framework by between £180 million and £280 million per year. The estimated saving of closing the RO early to new onshore wind is up to £270 million per year. The details of those cost estimates are published in impact assessments that are available on DECC’s webpage.
Dr Whitehead
Does the Secretary of State agree that publishing impact assessments two months after decisions have been taken is unacceptable practice? Does she acknowledge that, using the alternative methodology in the impact assessment, the net present value of deciding to close the RO early turned out to be minus £100 million? That means that we are £100 million worse off as a result of her taking that decision, instead of allowing the RO to continue. If she had had the impact assessment to hand when she took the decision, might she have made a different decision after all?
Amber Rudd
What the hon. Gentleman fails to address in his question and does not seem to absorb from the steps that we have taken to address the costs is that at the centre of everything this Government do is the impact on consumer bills. We had a commitment to limit the levy control framework to £7.6 billion by 2020. When it became apparent that we were way in excess of that, but were still meeting our renewables targets, it was right to limit the amount of money we were spending. That is why we took action quickly to do so.