New bills promote renewable energy in the UK

The Government has recently issued an Energy Bill and a Planning Bill which should both help promote renewable energy projects in the UK.

These bills follow an Energy White Paper and a Planning White Paper which were issued last summer.

Stronger incentives for emerging technologies

In relation to renewable energy, the most important measure of the Energy Bill is to facilitate an increase in the number of Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) granted for energy generated from certain types of technology.

At present all eligible types of renewable energy technology are awarded one ROC.

The bill, however, introduces the principle of banding which will enable different numbers of ROCs to be given to different types of renewable energy technology depending on how established they are.

The highest-scoring ‘Emerging’ band, including wave, tidal stream, solar photovoltaic and microgeneration technologies, as well as ‘fuels created using an advanced conversion technology’ and certain types of dedicated biomass crops, will be upgraded to 2 ROC/MWh.

The number of certificates awarded for offshore wind production and dedicated regular biomass in the ‘Post-Demonstration’ band will increase to 1.5 ROC/MWh.

Other technologies such as onshore wind, hydro and geopressure will remain on 1 ROC/MWh in the ‘Reference’ band.

‘Established’ technologies such as sewage gas and landfill gas will have their allocation of ROCs reduced.

However, for some established technologies, the Government intends to introduce ‘grandfathering’ provisions so that existing projects using these technologies will continue to receive 1 ROC/MWh.

Further details later this year

Existing projects that use technologies that fall within the Post-Demonstration or Emerging bands are likely to be “banded-up” – i.e. they will receive the higher ROCs once the new arrangements come into force.

The new Planning Bill contains measures designed to help nationally significant infrastructure projects get through the planning process without undue delay.

However, some of these projects received Government grants and they are likely to be required to re-pay part of the grants in order to be eligible for the higher ROCs.

Further details of these arrangements will be contained in a Renewables Obligation Order which the Government will publish during 2008.

It should also be recognised that the new arrangements will need to comply with EU State Aid rules.

Streamlined planning for renewable projects

The new Planning Bill contains measures designed to help nationally significant infrastructure projects get through the planning process without undue delay.

Power plants which are to be treated as nationally significant infrastructure projects are onshore plants exceeding 50 MW and offshore plants exceeding 100 MW.

The intention is to have a streamlined process so that such projects will require a single unified consent rather than having to obtain a number of separate consents as at present.

Nationally significant infrastructure projects will be piloted through the planning process by an Infrastructure Planning Commission to be established.

Hopefully these proposals will help to speed up the planning process for renewable energy projects which will help the Government to meet the EU target to have 20% of energy provided from renewable sources by 2020.