Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will provide funding for the import of concentrated solar power from North Africa.

Under Electricity Market Reform, the Government’s Contract for Difference (CfD) scheme is the primary mechanism to support large scale electricity generation in the UK. Concentrated Solar Power is not currently an eligible technology for support from UK CfDs.

Under this scheme projects outside the UK are not currently eligible. The Government has been considering the benefits of supporting projects outside of the UK and published a paper in August 2014 setting out indicative areas of work that would need to be addressed to open the UK CfD scheme to eligible non-UK projects. This paper can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cfds-for-non-uk-renewable-electricity-projects