The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has launched a consultation on a series of proposed reforms to its existing Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme to facilitate the development and connection of green energy projects to the grid. The consultation aims to use the opinions and proposals from all the relevant stakeholders on contract length, planning, and target commissioning windows for solar projects before the launch of the planned CfD Allocation Round 7 later this year.
The proposed reforms include relaxing the eligibility criteria on planning consent for fixed-bottom offshore wind, changing the way budgets for offshore wind are set and published, extending the CfD contract term beyond the current 15 years to make renewables contracts more cost-effective, and enabling CfD support for repowered onshore wind projects. Other proposals include enabling repowering contracts for onshore wind projects seeking to increase their capacity, expanding phasing to CfDs to floating offshore wind, increasing the target commissioning window for solar projects from three to six months, and removing the ability of existing CfD generators to apply surrendered capacity from previous allocations rounds into AR7. The consultation will be open until 21 March 2025 and it expects to help modify the scheme to provide developers with the certainty they require to build clean energy projects in the country.
There have been six CfD allocation rounds, with the CfD AR6 delivering a total of 128 projects with a combined capacity of 9.6 GW, most of which where offshore wind. The UK aims to have 43-50 GW to reach clean power by 2030, with about 30.7 GW of offshore wind installed or committed projects, and an additional 7.2 GW of allocated capacity so far.
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