Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reasons there are no proposals on solar power in the key policies and proposals listed on pages 12 to 16 of the Clean Growth Strategy.

Solar power is a UK success story, with rapid deployment over the last 7 years. Latest figures indicate that we now have over 12.5GW of solar capacity installed in the UK, enough to power over 2.7 million homes and exceeding our historic projections.

The Clean Growth Strategy notes that we are now beginning to see solar deploying without subsidy in the UK. Support for solar comes directly from people’s bills, so when costs come down, so should support. Therefore we took steps to control the costs of support schemes and put solar on a path to delivering without subsidy. We expect subsidy-free solar to be an increasingly attractive option, with the first subsidy-free UK solar farm recently deploying. Some of the UK’s largest solar developers have said that they will be installing and connecting subsidy-free sites over the next 12 months.