Plan to aid electricity production is praised
PLANS to give a boost to small scale electricity production, including domestic generation, were hailed yesterday as an important advance for the Province.
Commenting on the proposals from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) to change the support structure for the sector under the Northern Ireland Renewables Obligation (NIRO) scheme, Michael Doran of energy promotion agency Action Renewables said they offered a good opportunity for the Province to play catch-up with the rest of the UK.
Publishing her response to the consultation, DETI Minister Arlene Foster said NIRO was an essential mechanism to nurture renewable growth.
“It is the main support mechanism for incentivising renewable electricity generation,” she said.
“It has been very successful in enabling Northern Ireland to achieve almost 10 per cent renewable electricity generation and will be essential if we are to meet our proposed 40 per cent target by 2020.”
The changes will bring Northern Ireland roughly into line with the rest of the UK as Mr Doran explained.
“GB adopted a thing called the 2008 Energy Act and Northern Ireland chose not to adopt that act because they felt that the market conditions here were different.
“As a result of that we cannot bring in the measures that will come in in GB on April 1.
“They’re bringing in a system called feed-in tariffs which is a graduated amount of money that you can get depending on how you are producing the electricity, which technology you are using and the scale of it.
“Basically, the bigger the scale the less money you get which recognises that the small guys need slightly more money to get established.”
Mrs Foster said the principle of the feed-in tariff had been a key feature of the consultation.
“My Department is in the process of commissioning detailed work to make an assessment of the cost of introducing a small-scale Feed-In Tariff, similar to that in GB.
“However, the cost to the consumer will be the key determining factor in a decision on this issue.”
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Weather for Belfast
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
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