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).
“
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-04-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what progress his Department has made in mobilising the mid-scale solar photovoltaic sector; and if he will make a statement.
Gregory Barker
On Friday 4th April I launched the UK’s first Solar PV Strategy, which set out our ambition for Solar PV in the UK. Central to this is an emphasis on deployment on Commercial and Industrial buildings as well as domestic roof tops, rather than large scale ground-mounted systems.
The solar strategy sets out a number of wide ranging actions which will encourage deployment in this part of the sector.
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:
They plan to meet again early this summer.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-03-31.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what discussions he had with investors in renewable energy before the changes to the Enterprise Investment Scheme on tax breaks for companies benefiting from the Renewables Obligation.
Mr David Gauke
Budget 2014 announced that companies benefiting from Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) and/or the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme will be excluded from the venture capital schemes, including the enterprise investment scheme.
This change ensures the venture capital schemes continue to support smaller and growing businesses in a targeted and effective way. The government consulted extensively with stakeholders when similar action was taken to exclude companies benefitting from Feed-in-Tariffs from the venture capital schemes in 2011.
Further information on the detail of the change will be published shortly, ahead of the publication of an impact assessment and legislation.
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 effect of contracts for difference auctioning on small and medium-sized enterprises in the (a) renewable energy sector and (b) solar power industry.
Michael Fallon
The Department launched a consultation on our approach to competitive allocation of Contracts for Difference (CfDs) in January 2014. This included proposals to move to auctioning of CfDs from the first allocation this autumn. We carefully considered the responses to the consultation from small and medium-sized enterprises in the renewable energy sector and the solar power industry before confirming our policy position in the Government Response published on 13 May 2014. We will continue to engage with SMEs as we implement our proposals for competitive allocation to understand any difficulties they might face in participating in an auction for CfDs.
The tribute made by Julie Elliott, the Labour MP for Sunderland Central, in the House of Commons on 9 September 2022.
It is a huge honour to take part in these tributes on behalf of my constituents. As has been said, we must remember that Her Majesty’s family are grieving the loss of their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. The loss of someone in that position in a family is immense for those who go through it; it changes people’s lives forever. My sincere condolences go to the family.
We all chose to take on the role of public service, but the Queen did not. She was born to serve—and how she served for her 96 years. When we saw that photograph the other day of her receiving the new Prime Minister, she looked very frail and was clearly not in the best of health, but did any of us really think that, a day or two later, she would not be with us? She was serving to the very end. That was her life, and we are all grateful for that. Her wisdom, and the way she did that, has been immense.
I will mention a couple of things in my life and my memories of the Queen. The first time I saw the Queen was at the silver jubilee when she was travelling from Gypsies Green stadium in South Shields to Sunderland. The village I am from is right in the middle of those two places. We all went to the coast road and saw her for only seconds, probably, but it felt like a lifetime—we were stood there for an hour. It was so exciting and uplifting. Over the years, every time Her Majesty came to Sunderland, hundreds of thousands of people would be standing by just to see her car pass.
In those days I never dreamt that I would get to meet the Queen, but I had the privilege of meeting her twice in her diamond jubilee year. When she came to Sunderland that year, she came off a yacht because the port was the most secure place for her to have slept. As she came off, a Vulcan bomber went past and, as everyone has said, she showed that smile and engagement with everybody, as if they were the most important person in the world. I will never forget that.
I will mention the occasion when I visited London with my twin daughters to see a concert. The traffic stopped when we were in Trafalgar Square and we thought, “Oh, who’s coming past?”, and it was the Queen. There is a nursery rhyme about going to London to visit the Queen, and in our family, my daughters say, “When we went to London, we saw the Queen!”
The Queen visited Sunderland many times, the first time as Princess Elizabeth when she launched a ship. It was just after the second world war and Sunderland produced the most ships of anywhere in the world.
I do not want to repeat everything that has been said, but her comforting and calm presence when she addressed the nation is the thing I will miss most—that calming feeling that I got when she addressed the nation lastly in the pandemic, as has been said, and made me think, “Well, we’re all going to be all right.” We all got that calming, nurturing feeling, as if we were one of her own. Losing her at that age, we have to celebrate a life well lived and thank her for a life of service. We remember her, and we hope that she rests in peace eternally.