Energy Minister Michael Fallon has promised investors that there will be no further delays to new incentives for the power sector.
He said that “this is the year” the UK Government would finally provide clarity to the industry through new contracts for difference amd the Energy Bill, which he believed would be enacted before Christmas.
Prime Minister David Cameron handed Mr Fallon the energy brief in March – and the new minister said the Conservative leader sent him in to “make sure we now deliver”.
In an interview with the parliamentary House magazine, he said: “This is the year investors will get clarity. Through the publication of the draft contracts for difference in July and through the passage of the Energy Bill, which we hope to be on the statute book before Christmas.
“The capacity market we are designing at the moment¬ – and we are hoping to start announcing more details of that as the summer goes on – they all want us to get on with it and we are getting on with it. That’s one of the things the Prime Minister sent me here to do, to make sure we now deliver.”
“What we’ve said is we are minded to run the first auction in 2014, we can’t do that until the Energy Bill is law and until we have approval from Brussels for the capacity market and the secondary legislation in place.
“We are talking to Brussels all the time. They see our proposals in draft. But we certainly couldn’t run one anyway before the middle of 2014. So we are minded to run one in the second half of ‘14 for delivery in 18. It takes four years from scratch to build a gas station, through the planning and construction, it takes seven years to get a nuclear station on line. So four years is pretty quick.”
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