The House of Lords has passed the Energy Bill at the third reading, including in it a number amendments setting out the mechanism that will allow for the Department for Energy and Climate Change to implement a Feed-In Tariff in the future. This has come following a long campaign by a number of organisations, including the Renewable Energy Association of which SEI is a member.

At present, the renewable and low-carbon energy industry is subsidised by the sale of ROCs under the Renewables Obligation. However, this system has been critcised for various reasons, including the large administrative burden (particularly a problem for microgeneration projects) and its failure to create sufficient prices to make building-integrated systems viable. In this regard, the UK is widely seen as lagging behind other European countries (amongst others), and consequently our domestic building integrated market is very small.

The recently amended Bill aims to address this, setting out a mechanism for the Minister for Energy and Climate Change (Ed Milliband at present) to create such a system. As well as electricity, the Bill also looks at a number of other energy-related issues, including incentives for sustainable heating systems.

Now that the Lords have passed the Bill, it now goes to the House of Commons, where it shall be debated on the 18th November.