KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON
BILLIONS in subsidies for developing renewable electricity projects are issued via auctions in annual “allocation rounds” (ARs). This year’s round, AR7, is running badly late, to the detriment of energy secretary Ed Miliband’s already flaky 2030 target for decarbonisation.
The delay arises from an embarrassing, unpublicised technical cock-up in the energy department’s budgeting methodology that it only discovered after last year’s AR6. So AR7 will incorporate budgeting changes on which Miliband is now hastily consulting.