Meg Hillier – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Meg Hillier on 2015-12-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what support her Department provides for community solar projects.

Andrea Leadsom

This Government is proud to support the community energy sector. We have provided £2m to support over 100 community groups through the Urban and Rural Community Energy Funds and community solar projects are able to access funding. We also provided £885,000 to Bristol City Council to develop a Local Authority Best Practice Programme, including community solar projects. The DECC-funded online Community Energy Hub helps communities across the UK share knowledge and information on community energy projects.

Community solar projects, up to 5MW in capacity, can also currently seek support through the Feed-in Tariff scheme. The scheme provides a generation tariff for the electricity generated by the installation and a tariff for electricity exported to the grid. These payments are in addition to bill savings for those projects that consume electricity generated onsite.