Department of Energy and Climate Change

On 12th July 2010, the Government announced a consultation on a new Microgeneration Strategy.

• See the DECC Press Release

This Strategy will look forward to 2020 and cover England only, and seeks views on four key policy areas that can help decarbonise the way we heat our homes and businesses, reducing the UK’s CO₂ emissions and contributing to our target of sourcing 20% of all EU energy from renewables by 2020.

The objectives of this Strategy are to:

• Set out the priorities for action in the near and medium term, in particular tackling the non-financial barriers facing the sector e.g. by providing advice and information about Microgeneration for householders, communities and small businesses;
• Promote a holistic approach to reducing carbon emissions in homes through energy efficiency, local energy generation and behavioural change; and
• Develop the microgeneration supply chain to ensure it is able to meet the expected rise in demand, in the process creating and sustaining jobs and thus helping to maximise the benefits of the green economy in the UK for small-scale renewable and low carbon onsite energy.

The consultation will look at four key areas for development:

• Quality: ensure consumers have confidence that equipment and installation is reliable and adheres to the highest standards
• Technology: examine how to improve products through more trialling of technologies new to the UK
• Skills: develop the microgeneration supply chain to ensure it is properly equipped with the right people to meet the expected rise in demand, as well as creating and sustaining jobs in the UK
• Advice: provide more accessible advice and information about Microgeneration to homeowners, communities and small businesses.

The Strategy will cover heat technologies up to 300 kW and up to 50kW for electricity. This will include:

• air, ground and water source heat pumps
• solar photovoltaics (PV)
• solar thermal water heating
• biomass boilers
• micro Combined Heat and Power (micro CHP)
• micro wind turbines
• fuel cells
• micro hydro schemes; and
• passive flue gas recovery devices

The Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Act 2009 commits Government to consult on a new Microgeneration Strategy with the expressed purpose to promote microgeneration technologies in England only. The Government will aim to publish the final Microgeneration Strategy in early 2011.

Consultation process

Rather than follow recent practice, and produce a document on which interested parties can comment, we wish to make sure that all those with the greatest knowledge and expertise in this field can contribute to the development of a draft strategy, which can then be widely consulted on later this year.

The process will include round-table discussions, steering groups, and a set of four working groups which will look at the key areas mentioned above.

On 21 July 2010, Greg Barker, Minister of Energy for DECC chaired the round-table discussions which was followed by a Steering Group meeting. The next stage of the consultation will involve a series of working group meetings, around the four theme areas mentioned below, to discuss what industry should be doing, and where Government can help to address non-financial barriers. Please click on the links below to access the scope paper for each working group:

• Quality and certification (Working group 1)
• Technology development (Working group 2)
• Skills (Working group 3)
• Information and advice (Working 4)

If you wish to take part in any of these working groups please email Emily Bacon at Emily.Bacon@eeph.org.uk.

At the end of the working group process an independent report summarising the outputs will be placed on this website for information. All comments in relation to the microgeneration strategy work can also be sent to: microgenconsult@decc.gsi.gov.uk

DECC will then produce a draft strategy document for consultation and comments in the autumn, which will be informed by the output of the working group exercise. It is expected that DECC Ministers will then publish the final Microgeneration Strategy early in 2011.

How to respond

A response can be submitted to: 

Confidentiality and data protection

In line with the Government’s Code of Practice on consultations and the Department
of Energy and Climate Change policy of openness, at the end of the consultation
period we will summarise all responses and place this summary on the DECC website. This summary will include a list of names of organisations that responded but not people’s personal names, addresses or other contact details. If you do not want all or part of your response or name to be made public, please state this clearly in the response. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Department.

You should also be aware that information provided in response to this consultation,
including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in
accordance with the access to information regimes (primarily the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and the
Environmental Information Regulations 2004).

If you want information that you have provided to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, among other things, with obligations of confidence.

In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the
information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an
assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances.

The Department will process your personal data in accordance with the DPA and in the majority of circumstances this will that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties.

Help with queries

Please direct any queries about this consultation to our dedicated e-mail address:
microgenconsult@decc.gsi.gov.uk; or in writing to the above address.

If you have any complaints about the consultation process (as opposed to comments about the issues which are the subject of the consultation) please address them to the DECC Consultation Co-ordinator:

DECC Consultation Co-ordinator
3 Whitehall Place
London SW1A 2AW
Email: consultation.coordinator@decc.gsi.gov.uk