Written question asked by Jonathan Reynolds (Labour) on Wednesday, 30 April 2014, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 6 May 2014. It was answered by Lord Barker of Battle (Conservative) on Monday, 12 May 2014 on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Renewable Energy: Feed-in Tariffs

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what assessment he has made of the effect of changes to tariff levels and degression thresholds outlined in Phase 2B of the feed-in-tariff on manufacturing and employment in the sub-15KW wind sector.

Answer: As the first degression for wind tariff bands was only introduced on 1 April 2014, it is too early to say what impact it has had on manufacturing and employment in the sub-15kW wind sector. Up to the end of 2013, over 5,150 wind installations had been accredited for FITs, and this pace of deployment has shown no signs of slowing since April 2013. The degression mechanism is very important for the cost control of the FITs scheme and for keeping the cost to the electricity consumer as low as possible.

Secondary information