Tag: Julie Elliott

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps his Department is taking to define and safeguard quality in solar farm developments.

Gregory Barker

In April 2014 we published the Solar PV Strategy [1], which set out the principle that Solar PV should be: appropriately sited, give proper weight to environmental considerations such as landscape and visual impact, heritage and local amenity, and provide opportunities for local communities to influence decisions that affect them and gain some form of community benefit.

The Solar Trade Association has produced “10 Commitments” for solar farm developers [2], and the National Solar Centre has produced its best practice guide for large scale solar PV development [3]. DECC will continue to work with industry through the Strategy Working Group to promote industry best-practice.

[1]

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/302049/uk_solar_pv_strategy_part_2.pdf

[2] http://www.solar-trade.org.uk/media/STA%2010%20commitments%20v%2010.pdf

[3] http://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/pdf/other_pdfs/KN5524_Planning_Guidance_reduced.pdf

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment he has made of the potential effects of EU state aid rules on the UK feed in tariff policy framework; and if he will make a statement.

Gregory Barker

The European Commission adopted new guidelines for Energy and Environmental Aid (EEAG) on 9 April. Existing schemes, such as the Feed-in Tariff scheme (FITs), are not required to be brought into line with these new guidelines for as long as the relevant scheme remains covered by its existing EU state aid approval. It would only need to be brought into line if we were to introduce a change to the scheme that would, in itself, require state aid notification, as this would be outside the existing approval. If, after consultation on any alterations to FITs, we were to propose such a change, we would consider the trade-offs and risks for the scheme as a whole before reaching a final policy decision.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how much solar PV was installed under the 250kW to 5MW feed-in tariff band in (a) 2012, (b) 2013 and (c) 2014 to date.

Gregory Barker

The table below shows the total number of 250kW to 5MW solar PV installations accredited under the Feed-in Tariff scheme.

From April	Number of installations	Total installed capacity (kW)
2010	0	0
2011	53	65,002
2012	8	6,428
2013	7	4,594
2014 [1]	0	0

Installations are grouped into years based on their ‘commissioning date’ i.e. the date the technology was physically installed and deemed to be up and running.

[1] Includes installations commissioned to the end of March 2014. April 2014 statistics will be published at 09:30am on Thursday 22nd May 2014 on the DECC website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monthly-small-scale-renewable-deployment).

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what estimate his Department has made of the number of people employed in the UK solar PV sector in (a) 2010, (b) 2011, (c) 2012, (d) 2013 and (e) 2014.

Gregory Barker

DECC does not hold this data.

In March the National Solar Centre estimated that the industry employs 13,723 people on a full time basis.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how much solar PV was installed under the 50kW to 5MW feed-in tariff bands in (a) 2012, (b) 2013 and (c) 2014 to date.

Gregory Barker

The table below shows the total number of 50kW to 5MW solar PV installations accredited under the Feed-in Tariff scheme.

From April	Number of installations	Total installed capacity (kW)
2010	11	956
2011	231	84,478
2012	212	36,878
2013	180	30,071
2014 [1]	2	320

Installations are grouped into years based on their ‘commissioning date’ i.e. the date the technology was physically installed and deemed to be up and running.

[1] Includes installations commissioned to the end of March 2014. April 2014 statistics will be published at 09:30am on Thursday 22nd May 2014 on the DECC website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monthly-small-scale-renewable-deployment).

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the proposed reduction in solar farm support under the Renewables Obligation on planned community-owned or shared ownership schemes.

Gregory Barker

The Government published the second part of our UK Solar PV Strategy Part 2 [1] on 4 April 2014. We made clear in that document that we are considering the implications of current trends of deployment in solar PV on the financial incentives available in Great Britain under the Renewables Obligation and small-scale Feed-in-Tariffs. We will issue a public consultation shortly proposing changes to financial support for solar PV.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-solar-pv-strategy-part-1-roadmap-to-a-brighter-future

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how many meetings of the Government industry solar strategy group have taken place since it was established in 2012; and on what dates that group met.

Gregory Barker

The Solar PV Strategy Group has met three times, on the following dates:

• 8 March 2013;
• 7 June 2013;
• 11 December 2013

They plan to meet again early this summer.