Clause 107 - Commencement

Part of Energy Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 21 June 2011.

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Photo of Charles Hendry Charles Hendry The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change 12:00, 21 June 2011

I do not have information on specific projects, but I can write to the hon. Gentleman. He brings together two separate issues, however. One is about encouraging the national park authorities and the Broads Authority to take part in renewable energy generation. The other is about funding decisions and the feed-in tariffs. We had to decide whether it was right for an above-average return to be made available to predominantly wealthy investors and paid for by less wealthy people in their electricity bills; that threatened to squeeze out smaller-scale projects.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, the Minister, has worked with tremendous attention to detail to ensure that we support the smaller projects—that was always the intention with the feed-in tariff and the microgeneration programme—and to put right the miscalculation made by the previous Government, who assumed that there would be no schemes of more than 50kW before 2013. It is now clear that megawatts were coming through planning, but although that miscalculation was made for understandable reasons, we had to put it right.