Letter to David Cameron

Community Energy Scotland is concerned that the comprehensive review of the Feed in Tariffs will result in possible reductions of wind and hydro rates and have adverse affect on community groups who have been developing projects for over 8 years.

This is also of concern to the banks who are financing some of the projects.  These groups could stand to lose grid connection deadlines if agreed funding is not released on time.

This year alone our groups could stand to install over 30MW contributing to  the Scottish Government's target of 500MW of community energy by 2020.  The profits from these are largely returned in initiatives which directly benefit these communities such as insulation schemes.

You can read the full text of the letter to the Prime Minister here  and the response from Greg Barker here 

On 9th February, DECC released its response to phase 1 of the comprehensive review.  Community Energy Scotland welcomes many of the proposals especially the option for pre-registration which might allow projects to be locked into a FIT rate once planning consent has been received. 

We are concerned however about some of the other new proposals:

• The predicted reduction in cost of  PV and micro-wind  technologies is unrealistic.  This would harm the sector and British industry as a lot of micro-wind turbines are made in the UK
• The proposed reduction for wind and hydro equates to annual cuts of about 5% which is unrealistic given these are established technologies and are gradually being installed in more marginal sites
• The proposals for ways in which groups would benefit from a community FIT will not give the sector the additional support it requires.

You can read the full response on the DECC page here or we have summarized it here.