Oral Answers to Questions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

1. What plans he has for the future of feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewables; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

Before answering that question, I should like to offer the apologies of the Secretary of State to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House. He is unable to attend today’s departmental questions, as he is still travelling back from China at the conclusion of the Prime Minister’s highly successful visit. However, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), and I will do our best to field questions from the House. We would both like to welcome the new team to their places on the Opposition Front Bench.

In respect of question 1, as confirmed in last month’s spending review, the coalition is fully committed to feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewables. We want an ambitious roll-out of a range of decentralised domestic and community-scale technologies, and to maximise the scheme’s value for money, particularly in the current fiscal climate.

Specifically, we have said that when we review the scheme in 2012, we will reduce projected costs by 2014-15 by at least £40 million. Only in the event of deployment running ahead of published projections would we bring forward that review. But, to reassure the industry further, we will announce the trigger for such an early review shortly.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Many businesses say that too few people know how feed-in tariffs can help them save money and the planet at the same time. What steps can Ministers take to build feed-in tariffs up to a substantial market scale?

[Gregory Barker]

We are very keen to encourage businesses, communities and, of course, home owners to engage in the decentralised energy revolution, and to that end I am very pleased to tell my hon. Friend that we will shortly publish a new online initiative, giving a whole lot of detail to communities and businesses in order to allow them to access financial incentives and to cut through regulation.