Consultation outcome

Controlling the costs of biomass conversion and co-firing under the Renewables Obligation

From:: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Published: 15 September 2017
Last updated: 17 January 2018 — See all updates

Download the full outcome

Government response to consultation on controlling the costs of biomass conversion and co-firing under the Renewables Obligation

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Impact assessment: Government response to the consultation on controlling the costs of biomass conversion and co-firing under the Renewables Obligation

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Detail of outcome

The consultation proposed either a generator cap or a reduction in support levels for biomass conversion or co-firing projects not benefitting from grandfathering.

Having taken feedback into account, we intend to introduce an amended version of the generator cap. This will allow stations to receive up to 125,000 Renewables Obligation Certificates a year per non-grandfathered unit, with the ability to optimise generation between non-grandfathered units and, where applicable, grandfathered units, within a station. This will enable us to control costs to consumers, whilst giving generators the flexibility to operate more when most required by the system, and it should bring more unabated coal off the system earlier, with associated carbon savings. Further details of how the cap will operate are set out in the response document.

Next steps

We will implement the cost control measures through changes to the Renewables Obligation Order 2015. Subject to Parliamentary approval, we intend the cost controls to come into force in 2018/19.

Detail of feedback received

We received responses from 21 organisations (and 1 private individual), including:

Affected generators
Energy companies
Non-Government Organisations
Companies in the biomass supply and distribution chain

All responses received as part of the consultation were considered in developing the final policy positions. Summaries of comments are set out in the response document. A full list of respondents is included in Annex A.

Original consultation

Consultation description

We’re seeking views from interested parties on proposals for controlling the costs of non-grandfathered biomass conversion and co-firing units under the Renewables Obligation, to apply from 1 April 2018 (subject to the outcome of this consultation and Parliamentary approval). The two options proposed are a generator cap or a re-banding of support levels.

The draft Impact Assessment contains an initial assessment of the net impacts of the proposals.

We are seeking views on both possible approaches and their likely impacts ahead of a final decision.

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