U.K. Confirms End for Onshore Wind Subsidies

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The U.K government has confirmed plans to end all financial support for new onshore windfarms by April next year.

The new Conservative Party-led government is following through on election promises made earlier this year to "halt the spread of onshore windfarms," claiming they lacked public support and were not reliable enough to underpin a stable energy system. For additional information, see April 20, 2015, article - Onshore Wind Faces U.K. Block.

The new legislation will go into effect on April 1, 2016. According to the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), it "will end new public subsidies for onshore windfarms by legislating to close the Renewables Obligation across Great Britain to new onshore wind generating stations." However, there will be a grace period of 12 months--until March 2017--offered to onshore projects that have already secured grid, planning and land rights. This could apply to up to 5.2-gigawatts (GW) of onshore projects in the pipeline, DECC said. The government is hoping the grace period will help avoid threatened legal action from the renewable energy sector.

The new U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Amber Rudd, said: "We have a long-term plan to keep the lights on and our homes warm, power the economy with cleaner energy, and keep bills as low as possible for hard-working families. As part of our plan, we are committed to cutting our carbon emissions by fostering enterprise, competition, opportunity and growth. We want to help technologies stand on their own two feet, not encourage a reliance on public subsidies. So we are driving forward our commitment to end new onshore wind subsidies and give local communities the final say over any new windfarms. Onshore wind is an important part of our energy mix and we now have enough subsidised projects in the pipeline to meet our renewable energy commitments."

The U.K.'s green energy lobby, RenewableUK, called on the government to reconsider the cuts.

"The government's decision to end prematurely financial support for onshore wind sends a chilling signal not just to the renewable energy industry, but to all investors right across the U.K.'s infrastructure sectors," argued RenewableUK's Chief Executive, Maria McCaffery. "It means this government is quite prepared to pull the rug from under the feet of investors, even when this country desperately needs to clean up the way we generate electricity at the lowest possible cost--which is onshore wind. People's fuel bills will increase directly as a result of this government's actions."

She added: "Ministers are out of step with the public, as two-thirds of people in the U.K. consistently support onshore wind. Meanwhile, the government is bending over backwards to encourage fracking, even though less than a quarter of the public supports it."

The U.K. is the world's sixth-largest wind energy nation with approximately 12 GW of installed wind capacity, with onshore wind accounting for most of that with 8 GW.

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