Melanie Onn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Melanie Onn on 2016-03-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, pursuant to her oral contribution of 2 March 2016 to the Ninth Delegated Legislation Committee on the draft Renewables Obligation Closure Etc. (Amendment) Order 2016, what the evidential basis is for the statement that, with reference to the solar industry, it is not true to say that there are thousands of job losses and that there will be thousands more.

Andrea Leadsom

We see a strong future for solar PV in the UK.

In order to support the path to subsidy-free solar deployment, we have decided to keep the Feed-in-Tariff scheme open, and expect that the scheme could support 15,000-23,000 jobs in the sector. There will continue to be jobs in the operation and maintenance of existing solar installations.

We also expect subsidy-free solar to be an increasingly attractive option. Lightsource, the biggest solar developer in the UK, have said publically that they will be installing and connecting subsidy-free sites in 2016.

Support for solar comes directly from people’s bills, so when costs come down, so should support. Therefore we have taken steps to control the costs of support schemes and put solar on a path to delivering without subsidy.