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

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment has been made of the effects of the reduction in the feed-in tariff on 14 January 2016 on small scale hydro producers.

The Government published an impact assessment alongside the Government Response to the FIT Review consultation on 17 December, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/486084/IA_-_FITs_consultation_response_with_Annexes_-_FINAL_SIGNED.pdf

This impact assessment set out the impact of deployment caps and tariff changes to different technologies. For the hydro sector, new tariffs are designed to provide a target rate of return of 9.2% for efficient and well-sited installations and could support around 880 installations between 2016-19.