Department of Energy and Climate Change consultation
On the 13th May the Department of Energy and Climate change released the consultation documents below. The proposals potentially have far reaching repercussions for community energy.
As Philip Wolfe, non-executive director and chairman of Westmill Solar Co-operative (the world’s biggest solar co-op) put it:
“It would appear that soon there will only be one player left in town.”
He was referring to the proposed obligation for commercial solar developers to build in community ownership into all of their schemes, in other words all solar development would soon become community energy development.
Naturally, as an organisation whose vision is about facilitating local ownership of natural assets, we are delighted with this. We are positioned perfectly to carry on building our solar portfolio and also help commercial developers build the community ownership that they will need, to be able to carry on with their projects.
Unfortunately, nothing is ever that straight forward, the government is also proposing measures to restrict the amount of Feed In Tariffs available ground-mounted solar development. So, basically, with two planning applications going in the the next couple of weeks, the race is definitely on.
The consultation closes on 7th July. We will be preparing a response to the consultation. If you would like us to share this with you please let us know.
Part_A_-_Introduction_and_estimates_of_deployment
