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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support his Department is providing to energy providers facing penalties for non-delivery of Capacity Market commitments that were terminated as a result of the closure of the Capacity Market in 2018-19.

The Capacity Market is the Government’s main tool for ensuring security of electricity supply. Capacity agreements impose a range of obligations and milestones on capacity providers both in the lead up to the delivery year and in the delivery year itself. This provides assurance that agreements will be met.

In light of the uncertainty created by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) judgment and subsequent standstill period, the Government recognised that in some instances capacity providers might find it difficult to achieve compliance with these obligations by the set deadline. A range of these obligations and milestones were modified where there was a high provider cost associated with the obligation and its modification would not create risks to security of supply.