Draft Electricity Supplier Payments (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Greg Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 General Committees

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Electricity Supplier Payments (Amendment) Regulations 2016.

Sir Edward, it is a pleasure to serve under your guidance. This instrument amends regulations concerning the contracts for difference scheme and the capacity market. As a reminder to hon. Members, these two schemes were key elements of the electricity market reform programme that was introduced in the previous Parliament. Both the CfD scheme and the capacity market are designed to incentivise the significant investment required in our electricity infrastructure to keep costs affordable for consumers and to help meet our decarbonisation targets, while keeping our energy supply secure.

Contracts for difference, or CfDs, provide long-term price stabilisation to low carbon generators, allowing investment to come forward at a lower cost of capital and therefore, at a lower cost to consumers. The capacity market provides regular payments to reliable forms of generation in return for such capacity being available when needed, thus ensuring that enough capacity is always in place to maintain security of supply. In both schemes, participants bid for support via a competitive auction, which ensures that costs to consumers are minimised.

As hon. Members will be aware, the first CfD allocation round was held in October 2014, delivering 25 large-scale renewable generation projects at a significantly lower cost than the renewables obligation scheme, which is being phased out. The first capacity market auction was held in December 2014, with a second auction held last December, securing 46 GW of capacity at a price of £18 per kilowatt per year, along with a recent transitional auction for demand-side response held earlier this year.

Hon. Members will be aware that the Government today announced a number of changes to the capacity market framework to ensure that it remains fit for purpose to meet our security-of-supply needs, including bringing forward delivery by holding a new early auction for delivery in winter 2017-18. A consultation on those changes has been launched and we will make final decisions in due course.

However, the regulations that we are considering today have a different purpose. The Government are simply seeking to make a number of technical amendments relating to how money is collected from electricity suppliers in Great Britain in order to fund the schemes. Specifically, the proposed amendments would improve the efficiency with which CfD costs are recovered from electricity suppliers, which will ultimately reduce costs to consumers, and set the rates for the operational levies relating to both schemes.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

The Minister has indicated that the amendments are largely technical. Will she tell the Committee whether her Department has received any objections to what is proposed, and if so, the nature of such objections?

[Andrea Leadsom]

There has been consultation with industry and respondents have been largely supportive of the proposals. They are technical in nature and are not controversial.

The instrument under consideration builds on the instrument that established the CfD supplier obligation mechanism. The CfD supplier obligation is levied on all licensed electricity suppliers in Great Britain to meet the costs of the support received by generators that hold a CfD. That levy on electricity suppliers in Great Britain is set on a quarterly basis by the Low Carbon Contracts Company, which is a Government-owned company that acts as the counterparty to CfD contracts. The Low Carbon Contracts Company sets the levy and a reserve amount based on forecasts of payments to CfD generators, which are then reconciled against actual payments in arrears.

This instrument makes a number of minor and technical amendments to improve the efficiency and transparency of the supplier obligation to minimise costs to suppliers, and ultimately, to consumers. The most significant aspects of the amendments are as follows. First, the regulations amend the calculation of the levy that is paid by electricity suppliers on each unit of supply, so that it is a better reflection of suppliers’ likely actual liabilities. Secondly, they allow the levy to be reduced without notice when the Low Carbon Contracts Company anticipates collecting significantly more than required, in order to reduce the likelihood of electricity suppliers paying more than they need to pay. Thirdly, they require the Low Carbon Contracts Company to forecast CfD costs for at least the next 12 months and to publish the date from which each generator is expected to begin receiving CfD payments. That is to provide greater transparency on the costs that electricity suppliers and consumers will face in future.

All the proposals implemented by the instrument were consulted on publicly, and received a largely favourable response. We estimate that the changes, in addition to further regulations which we plan to lay in due course, will reduce the costs to consumers of CfDs by approximately £38 million over the period 2016-20. This instrument also sets the annual operational cost levy for the Low Carbon Contracts Company, as well as setting the settlement costs levy that funds the annual budget of the Electricity Settlements Company, which is responsible for collecting and making payments to capacity providers under the capacity market. The amendments revise the levies for 2015-16 to reflect the operational requirements and objectives of the companies in 2016-17. Both levies were subject to public consultation, giving stakeholders the opportunity to scrutinise and test the key assumptions in the budgets and, importantly, ensure that they represent value for money.

Subject to the will of Parliament, the changes to the CfD supplier obligation, the operational costs levy for the Low Carbon Contracts Company and the settlement costs levy for the Electricity Settlements Company are due to come into force by 1 April 2016. Finally, I would like to assure all hon. Members that the Government will continue to evaluate and monitor the reforms following implementation, ensuring that the measures put in place remain effective and continue to represent value for money for the consumer.