The UK Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced it plans to strongly reduce feed-in tariffs (FiTs) paid to small-scale solar and wind power installations. Under the proposal, the FiTs for home owners and businesses producing electricity from roof-top solar and small wind turbines will be stopped from January 2016.
In June 2015, the DECC already announced it planned to limit support to on-shore wind generation and large-scale solar parks. Under the proposals, the FiTs are planned drop to £1.63c/kWh (€2.2c/kWh) from a current level of £12.92c/kWh (€17.6c/kWh) for a new residential solar system, while supports for wind of between 100 kW and 500 kW will fall from £10.85c/kWh (€13.4cc/kWh) to £4.52c/kWh (€5.6c/kWh).
This cut aims to reduce the weight of renewable subsidies on households expenditures as financial supports for low-carbon electricity generation are covered through additions to consumer bills. Without this cut consumers expenditures were expected to reach £9.1bn (€11.2bn) (2011/12 prices) in 2020/21 compared to an objective of £7.6bn (€9.3bn) in 2020/21 (2011/12 prices) fixed by the Levy Control Framework (LCF); corresponding to an overspend of around 20%.
As of the end of July 2015, overall UK solar PV capacity stood at 7,872 MW, of which 3,206 MW supported through feed-in tariffs, including 2,363 MW of installations with capacity below 50 kW.
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