Further written evidence reported to the House
Energy Bill
10:40 am
Gaynor Hartnell: In the Renewable Energy Association, we believe that a 20 per cent renewable energy contribution is possible by 2020, and we have a paper that shows how that could even be slightly exceeded. At the moment, we have a renewable electricity obligation and we are shortly going to have a transport fuel obligation, but we need to have action across the whole breadth of not just the industry, but other parts of the economy as well. We really need more involvement with house building, with industry, and commercial applications. As far as the renewables obligation is concerned we feel it is extremely effective at the job it is designed to do, which is large-scale renewable power projects.
When it comes to on-site generation, these are entities whose core line of business is not developing power stations. It is incredibly complex, and the arrangements are not suitable to engage the kind of commercial entities that may want to generate some power for their own needs, but do not want to tackle all that complexity. So we believe it would be more appropriate to have something like a basic tariff structure—people are more familiar with the term feed-in tariffs—for smaller-scale generation, and I do not just mean microgeneration or under 50 KW, but you would need to have a boundary somewhere. That would be more appropriate to reach out to a wide range of sites that may be available: sites like sewage treatment works, waste management facilities, or next to warehouses, hospitals or industrial estates. These are not your typical renewable power station hilltop sites, but there are a vast number of them and they may well have advantages when it comes to planning. So the renewables obligation has to remain in place to give security to the industry. It would be extremely damaging if it were changed, but we believe that a feed-in tariff mechanism can coexist with a renewables obligation and widen the applicability. We also need an effective measure for renewable heat, and a tariff-based mechanism—clear straightforward and simple—is much more likely to succeed in following the renewable obligation tradable certificate kind of route.