Throughout the year, Good Energy is in touch with key MPs, officials and policymakers in Westminster to put across what we think the Government should be doing to help the UK move to a 100% renewable energy future. The energy market is always a hot topic in Parliament, and not just when the Big Six decide to hike their price rises because of their over reliance on unsecure supplies of fossil fuels from abroad.
As part of this, we are always keen to speak out on the issues that our generators tell us are affecting them, and as a result one of the things we’ve been doing some work around of late is the ridiculous decision by Ofgem to pay FIT generators on a quarterly basis, rather than a monthly one as most people would expect.
Naturally we’ve spoken to the relevant officials, including the Ofgem Chief Executive Alistair Buchanan, but we’re not so sure they are quite getting the message. We know from speaking to many of our generators that this is a big issue for them, so we thought it might be a good idea to pull together some campaigning materials so that Good Energy customers can raise it with their local MP and get them to try and get Ofgem see sense on this issue.
A suggested template email is below and it tries to break down the problem to quite straightforward terms for your local MP, who more likely than not, will be unaware of the technical detail of FITs. Obviously it will require a bit of editing, to put in your own information and perhaps change one or two other parts of it, but otherwise we hope that it is very much good to go.
Sending this is pretty simple:
- Find out who your local MP is by typing in your postcode to this website
- Click on the MP’s name to go through to the page which displays their email address
- Copy and paste the email address into a new email, along with the subject line and suggested text below, edited as you so wish.
- Hit send!
We’d like to hear from you if you have any questions or what reply you receive from your MP, so please do get in touch via campaigns@goodenergy.co.uk
Our suggested email
Subject: URGENT - Frequency of microgeneration payments
[Your postal address – it is important you include this so to confirm to your MP that you are from his or her constituency, otherwise your email is likely to be ignored]
Dear [MP’s title and name],
I am writing to you as a constituent regarding the frequency of payments for renewable energy microgeneration projects. The nature of this concern is urgent as the Government is currently in the process of making a decision on this matter.
In [the year you started generating], I took the decision to install [the detail of the size and technology of your project] to take advantage of the Government’s “feed-in tariff” (FIT) scheme. This scheme aims to encourage ordinary householders and businesses to undertake their own microgeneration projects to help increase the uptake of renewable energy. The scheme works by guaranteeing that I receive a certain rate of payment, from my electricity supplier, for each kilowatt hour of electricity that I generate.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change, through Ofgem, is responsible for administering these payments. It currently does so by making them quarterly rather than monthly. Ofgem initially made the decision to do so on a temporary basis in order to speed up the implementation of the FIT scheme with the intention of moving to monthly payments at a later date, on the grounds that this timeframe forms the basis on which the vast majority of people of administer their financial affairs.
Like many microgenerators, the large, initial financial outlay for my generation equipment was debt-financed, secured on the basis that regular, guaranteed payments for generating electricity would make it easy to repay this sum on a monthly basis. It is my understanding, however, that Ofgem now plans to make its quarterly payment arrangement permanent. This is despite only the flimsiest of evidence to suggest that a change to monthly payments would like to an increase in the workload required to run the scheme. A decision to do so would be of considerable inconvenience to myself and the running of my financial affairs. I understand this concern is widely shared amongst others in the microgeneration community around the country, suggesting that any decision by Ofgem to retain quarterly payments would run contrary to its objective of safeguarding the consumer interest in the electricity market.
I do hope that you will be able to help with this matter. As my local MP, I would be very grateful for any assistance you might be able to provide in raising this issue, either verbally or in writing, with Ofgem Chief Executive Alistair Buchanan and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker, by urging a move to monthly FIT payments as originally planned, at the first opportunity.
I look forward to receiving your response soon.
Kind regards
