Last July, the UK government started to roll back support for renewable energy, citing forecasts of cost overruns and the need to keep down household bills. New projections showed the Levy Control Framework (LCF) cap for low-carbon support would be breached, the government said. Yet it has never published the details of its updated calculations, despite the multi-billion pound implications for the direction of UK energy investment. Carbon Brief has pursued a long-running Freedom of Information (FOI) request in an attempt to shed light on the pivotal forecasts. DECC and the Treasury released just two emails in response to Carbon Brief’s FOI request. (We have complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office over this limited release.) Following the email release, our 5 January article contained five questions on the LCF overspend for the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which has now responded (see below). Nevertheless, a series of crucial questions on the LCF remain unanswered. The LCF is interlinked with most major decisions on the UK’s energy future, giving these questions extra significance. Apart from Carbon Brief, some of the “big six” top energy suppliers, the UK energy industry’s trade association, renewable energy trade organisations, energy market analysts, opposition MPs, the National Audit Office and others have all called for greater transparency on the LCF. For example, in October 2015 major energy supplier E.On said: The evidence around cost overruns of the LCF is questionable and not transparent; publication of detailed analysis of the status of the LCF should be a priority.
Carbon Brief 25th Jan 2016 read more »