Julie Elliott – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

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 he has made of the potential effects of EU state aid rules on the UK feed in tariff policy framework; and if he will make a statement.

Gregory Barker

The European Commission adopted new guidelines for Energy and Environmental Aid (EEAG) on 9 April. Existing schemes, such as the Feed-in Tariff scheme (FITs), are not required to be brought into line with these new guidelines for as long as the relevant scheme remains covered by its existing EU state aid approval. It would only need to be brought into line if we were to introduce a change to the scheme that would, in itself, require state aid notification, as this would be outside the existing approval. If, after consultation on any alterations to FITs, we were to propose such a change, we would consider the trade-offs and risks for the scheme as a whole before reaching a final policy decision.