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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the cost to the public purse has been of energy subsidies to private energy companies in each of the last five years.

There are no direct Government energy subsidies to private energy companies.

The costs of renewable energy schemes for electricity are funded through consumer energy bills rather than from general taxation.

The Government provides financial support to non-domestic renewable heat generators and producers of biomethane through the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

The RHI payments made to all participants including energy companies are to bridge the cost differential of installing renewable plant over fossil fuel alternatives.

The Department publishes data of renewable heat generation (or equivalent energy for biomethane injected to the gas grid) broken down by Standard Industry Classification Code (SIC) but does not hold data on payments by SIC code.

This information may be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rhi-deployment-data-october-2017