Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has been forced to defend her decision to allocate a new subsidy to back-up ‘diesel farms’ in Parliament today (7 January). The £175m funding, announced last month, is part of the capacity market scheme which provides payments to power plants to keep them on standby in case of power shortages. In this afternoon’s Energy Questions session in the House of Commons, Rudd was grilled on the policy by shadow energy secretary Lisa Nandy. Nandy said: “Last month, the Secretary of State agreed to hand out hundreds of millions of pounds in new public subsidies to diesel and coal power generators through her capacity market scheme. “Can you tell the House how much family energy bills will rise as a consequence?” Rudd responded by claiming that the capacity scheme is in fact needed “because of Labour’s woeful underinvestment in energy infrastructure during their Government,” adding that energy security is a “non-negotiable priority” for the Conservative Government. When pressed by Nandy on exactly how much the subsidies would add to household energy bills, Rudd replied: “It is a few pounds – it will be under £10”.
Edie 7th Jan 2016 read more »
British families will be forced to fork out up to £10 a year through their energy bills to fund subsidies paid out to polluting diesel generators, the energy secretary admitted yesterday. Amber Rudd told the Commons that the £175 million subsidy scheme, which is designed to boost the UK’s access to back-up electricity generation, would be funded from household energy bills, saying that it would add “less than £10” to average bills.
Times 8th Jan 2016 read more »
An energy company that had hoped to extract gas from under the Firth of Forth has said it will now focus on projects outside Scotland. Cluff Natural Resources planned to build the UK’s first deep offshore underground coal gasification (UCG) plant at Kincardine in Fife. But its plans were put on hold last year ahead of the Scottish government imposing a moratorium on UCG. Cluff said it had now stopped all expenditure related to the project. It said this was despite its expectation that the moratorium on UCG would ultimately be lifted after a government study and consultation on its potential impact ends in the spring of next year.
BBC 7th Jan 2016 read more »
Energy Voice 7th Jan 2016 read more »
Times 8th Jan 2016 read more »
Scotsman 8th Jan 2016 read more »
Herald 8th Jan 2016 read more »