The UK government’s flagship Energy Bill became law today,
enshrining in statute a raft of new powers intended to reform the energy
market.
The Bill received Royal Assent in the House of Lords this
morning and will become the Energy Act 2013 when signed off by Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II later today.
The legislation sets out the core principles of DECC’s
electricity market reform agenda, and heralds the closure of the Renewables
Obligation to new entrants in April 2017. After this date feed-in tariffs with
Contracts for Difference will become the primary support regime for large scale
low carbon generators.
The Bill enables the Secretary of State to set a 2030
decarbonisation target for the electricity sector in 2016, and to hold capacity
market auctions that are designed to ensure security of supply.
The legislation also provides backstop powers for the
government to establish an off-taker of last resort to ensure a route to market
for independent generators.
Further information on these and other crucial elements of
EMR, such as the draft allocation technical framework, will be published over
the coming days, weeks and months.
RenewableUK welcomed the Royal Assent and said it meant “the
framework for development beyond 2017 is known”.
Chief executive Maria McCaffery warned, however: “There
are issues still to be resolved through secondary legislation and in the face
of very challenging strike prices there is much work to be done between
government and industry to ensure that obstacles are removed and much-needed
clean and domestic sources of energy can come forward over the next decade.”
Secondary legislation setting out the finer details of EMR
implementation will be laid before parliament towards early summer 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment