Describing himself today as ‘politically homeless’, Skidmore resigned last year as a Conservative MP and party member over the Sunak government’s retreat from green initiatives, including delaying tougher requirements on home insulation and extending sales of petrol-driven cars.

Re-affirming his faith as a Conservative in markets, Skidmore told a solar conference in London :

“The future of energy is local. Community energy will create more flexibility for consumers, in bringing cheaper, cleaner electricity, achieving Net Zero, even balancing the grid.  It re-builds communities.  But too few politicians realise its implications”.

While sitting as a Bristol MP, Skidmore was tasked by premier Johnson to conduct an expert review of Britain’s Net Zero policies.  His “Mission Zero” report in January 2023 contained over 120 recommendations, re-affirming the goal’s necessity, and calling for accelerated practical measures to reach the target, in the face of opposition from several fellow Conservatives at Westminster.

Rishi Sunak’s subsequent wavering over Net Zero convinced Skidmore to end his 14 year career at Westminster and his Tory party membership, concentrating instead on work as professor of Net Zero policy at Bath Unversity.

On 27 June with trade body Renewable UK, Skidmore will publish “Net Zero at the Crossroads”, a new assessment seeking to influence the incoming government’s pursuit of energy sustainability and deadlines towards its delivery.  The day is the fifth anniversary of Skidmore while energy minister signing the Johnson government’s Net Zero goals into UK law.

The ex-minister & ex-Conservative told Solar Media’s UK Solar Summit this morning that he remains committed to continuing his cross-party advocacy for green energy, including in community fora such as Oxford County Council’s energy round table.

“My message to practitioners in solar and in community energy is to engage as fully as possible with politicians at every level at this crucial time for clean power”, Skidmore told the conference.

Activists & volunteers working through around 300 energy co-ops in England & Wales are a corrective, Skidmore implied, to what he called Britain’s culture of viewing energy as ‘a commodity imposed from above, top down’.  He called for more community co-ops such as that he had known in Bristol, and endorsed the work of the ‘Right of Local Sale’ campaign, to which over half of all MPs are now signed up.

Recalling attitudes among his former Conservative colleagues at Westminster, Skidmore shared with the conference analysis that, of the 100 constituencies with the most household PV deployed, every one is represented by a Conservative MP.

Skidmore recalled that 49-day premier Liz Truss enthused to him over the benefits of rooftop solar, but opposed PV farms on agricultural land. He reminded delegates that only 3% of UK land would be required to deliver the government’s continuing goal of 70GW of installed PV by 2030.

During his work on the Net Zero review, Skidmore recalled that Craig McKinlay, leader of the Net Zero Review group of sceptical Tory MPs, had expressed frustration that over one million homes installing PV in the past decade would face added expense of having to upgrade rooftop systems in future.

Britain needs to follow the example of more participative energy cultures of our European neighbours, Skidmore argued. Technical changes enabling dispersed low carbon generation, sometimes no longer under the control of corporations, dictated that a culture change was necessary.  Community participants should be guiding politicians, he said.

Interest declared: the author invests in and participates in several local UK energy co-operatives, including in London & the south east.

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Energy minister Matthew Hancock has warned that companies that do not qualify to bid in the Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction may face bigger hurdles should they try to appeal. He wants to avoid appeals being a “no cost option” to generators that miss out on government-backed contracts.

Hancock was asked by the Energy & Climate Change whether improvements could be made to design of the CfD process and for assurances that the contracts would be awarded swiftly.

The contracts for difference auctions, which allocate contracts to eligible low carbon generators guaranteeing them a set price for power, were originally planned to take place in December with contracts awarded late December/early January. It will now take place in mid-February, provided all appeals have been concluded.

Hancock claimed that the programme remained “on the expected path as broadly set out, it’s just we knew that if there were appeals we would be on the back half of that [timetable]”.

Therefore it was “worth looking whether we get the incentives around appeals right”, he said.

He said it was “not necessarily” a case of making them “more administratively burdensome” but said a “no cost… risk free” appeals process meant generators would automatically appeal rather than consider whether they have a good chance of winning.

“You wouldn’t want a situation [like that]… because it undermines the whole decision making process. So will consider that after the CfD auction to see whether we can tighten up on timing.”

Watch the session here.

Related articles:

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Energy Minister Matthew Hancock has dismissed accusations from renewable lobby groups that auctions run as part of the government’s electricity market reform (EMR) favoured big companies over independent generators.

He also rejected claims that the recent capacity auction simply rewarded plant that would have been available without bill-payer incentives.

Facing Energy and Climate Change Committee scrutiny on EMR this week, Hancock was grilled by MPs about both the recent capacity auction and the forthcoming allocation of contracts for difference (CfDs).

The former auction is designed to reward generators for making plant available when it is needed and bring forward investment in new plant. The latter is designed to subsidise low carbon generation.

The first capacity auction (so-called T-4 because it secures capacity to be supplied in four year’s time) took place just before Christmas. It procured 49.26GW of capacity at a clearing price of £19.40kW. Most of that power will be provided by existing gas and coal plant, more than 2GW of new gas plant has contracted to supply power, and Decc was happy with the result.

However, the department has subsequently faced accusations that it has largely rewarded existing coal, gas and nuclear plant.

Old king coal

Sir Robert Smith, the Lib Dem MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, asked Hancock whether he agreed with that assessment, made by Carbon Brief (funded by the European Climate Foundation lobby group).

“No,” said Hancock. “I think the auction has been fair across technologies and we have a good balance of existing capacity that we want to remain on the system. Refurbished plant is one of the best values for money, and some new generation as well.”

Surely “some of the existing stuff would have stayed there anyway?” asked Smith.

“I fully expected that whatever the outcome of the auction there would have been some people complaining that it was the wrong one,” Hancock replied. “According to that critique, that is what has happened.”

“If there had been much more new capacity, those with existing capacity would have said ‘we have to keep our capacity open’,” Hancock continued. “If there had been no new capacity, people have said ‘this was supposed to get some new capacity onto the blocks.’ It’s about a balance and there will always be winners and losers.”

Big boys club?

Similarly, Hancock dismissed claims by renewables groups that their members had been “smothered out” by a process designed to favour big business, and that technologies such as solar PV had been overlooked.

Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, brought up evidence to that effect submitted by the Solar Trade Association’s external affairs chief Leonie Green.

Hancock suggested trade associations “would be failing in their duty” had they not “pushed for the design to be slightly more favourable to their particular technology… so of course there were proposals that we didn’t take up because we wanted it to be as fair as possible.” Hancock added he “would have been amazed if that wasn’t the case,” but denied he was suggesting all criticisms were self-interested.

John Robertson, Labour MP for Glasgow West then asked how Decc had helped smaller participants compete equally for CfDs. Hancock replied that the “proof of the pudding” would be determined after the inaugural auction (scheduled for April).

Robertson quoted criticisms by the STA’s Green that sinking £200,000 into prequalification criteria for the CFDs created a disproportionate risk for smaller firms. He also noted comments from Renewable Energy Association chief Nina Skurupska that the CFD framework is geared toward companies that understand the market mechanisms, “less so for those that want to enter the market.”

Giving evidence to the committee earlier that day, National Grid head of regulation Mark Ripley had suggested that those wishing to participate in the generation market should at least have a grasp of its workings.

Hancock, though, said the critical factor was affordability and certainty. He replied to Robertson that as small business minister he “bowed to no one” in trying to help small firms compete. However, “if we are signing up bill payers to multimillion or billion pound contracts, we have to have a reasonable certainty that the businesses on the other side can deliver.”

Hancock suggested small businesses opt for the Feed in Tariff (FiTs) scheme as the cost of entry is much lower. “So this [the CfD] is designed for the big stuff. [The feed-in tariff] is a much simpler and cheaper to apply for system for the smaller stuff.” He admitted that “very small suppliers will find it very difficult to get through the same process [compared to] multi-billion pound power stations… but I make no excuses for dealing cautiously with money that consumers pay on their bills.”

Renewable groups had also suggested holding more frequent auctions than the current annual allocation of contracts. Hancock accepted that debate as “perfectly reasonable” but said the department was “not looking at more than annual auctions”.

Watch the session here.

Related articles:

UK businesses pan electricity market reforms, prepare for 10% power price hikes in 2015

Another fine mess: Energy policy’s perverse outcomes mean ‘new Energy Act by 2017′

Click here to see if you qualify for a free subscription to the print magazine, or to renew.

Follow us at @EnergystMedia. For regular bulletins, sign up for the free newsletter.

The post Energy minister dismisses ‘big company bias’ claims from renewables groups in capacity and CFD auctions appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Dave Cockshott, chief commercial officer at Inenco, asks why energy took a back seat at this autumn’s political party conferences.

Ahead of the general election, this autumn’s party conference season was a chance to hear where the priorities of each party lie, and policies we should expect to hear more about during their election campaigns.

Last year’s conference season was a bumper one for energy. Labour surprised us all with their announcement of an immediate energy freeze should they be elected in 2015. The Tories responded with their commitment to cut “green taxes”, taking £50 off the average domestic bill and sending the insulation industry into disarray but doing not very much for business energy use.

Energy became last autumn’s political football, with each party vowing to keep prices down and tackle the so-called “huge” profits of energy suppliers, and a suite of initiatives rolled out in an attempt to appease consumers.

With baited breath, we waited to hear where energy would feature on the agenda this year. The answer? Far down the agendas for each party, with no real developments to report. But why?

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats proposed domestic energy efficiency measures, but there was no mention of its importance to British industry. The Conservatives talked about the need to bring forward investment in shale gas and ensure renewables deliver “best value” for taxpayers but offered no further detail.

Labour insisted that freezing prices out to 2017 would allow them time to fix the “broken” market, but offered no further detail about how the price freeze would actually work. Many in the market believe such political uncertainty could well cause prices to shoot up ahead of the election as suppliers lock out volume – and liquidity in the market could also be damaged. Faced with such criticism of an “unworkable” policy, where was the detail? They also affirmed commitment to 2030 decarbonisation targets – but how would this be delivered?

Energy quite literally fuels our economy, and the lack of focus on it concerns me.

The billions of pounds of investment in both generation and energy efficiency is one of the UK’s biggest infrastructure challenges. The cost of energy impacts the corner shop as well as the factory, and thousands of households and businesses alike struggle with the effect of rising energy bills.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in energy, it’s the need for certainty. Whether it’s investment in energy efficiency or new generation capacity, one thing we all need is a stable environment. Long-term stability will provide the right climate for investors to build assets that will outlive the term of several governments. It also enables businesses to plan beyond a couple of years, safe in the knowledge that they won’t be hit with unexpected policy and costs.

Energy isn’t a fair-weather issue. The potential instability caused by a change in government threatens the ability to deliver investment, the price we pay for energy, and the ability of industry to compete in a global market. Over the coming months, we need a commitment from across the political spectrum recognising the need for stability and, above all else, recognition of the importance of energy to UK plc.

The article first appeared as a sponsored column in the October/November print issue of Water, Energy & Environment under the headline ‘Let’s put some energy back into politics’. Click here to see if you qualify for a free subscription.

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