On Tuesday the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published its response to the ‘Consultation on a change to the rules for extensions to installations under the GB Feed-in Tariffs Scheme’.
In short, DECC announced that the consultation on extending the large-scale Feed-in Tariff (FiT) had ended, and that the new rules on extensions will come into effect on 18 October 2011.
The decision effectively closes the loophole that had allowed solar companies to continue for 12 months to construct later phases of large-scale solar installations under the higher (pre 1 August) Feed-in Tariffs rate so long as the initial phase had been completed before 1 August. Those later phases now have to be complete by 18 October 2011.
Paul Latham, managing director of Octopus said “The announcement from DECC didn’t come as a surprise to us. We responded early to the likely changes to the FiTs for large-scale solar and all of our sites have been constructed, completed and connected. This has helped to make us one of the UK’s largest investors into solar, and we’re continuing to make excellent headway with our programme of smaller-scale sub-50Kw installations.”
Octopus raised the funds for its solar investments from investors in its Venture Capital Trust (VCT) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) tax-efficient vehicles, is currently receiving inflows of £10 million a month into its Octopus EIS and Octopus VCT 3&4 products, both of which are still open to new investment.
Tax-advantaged venture capital schemes
Octopus has also sent its response to HM Treasury’s consultation on Tax-Advantaged Venture Capital Schemes. Views from around the industry are being gathered, covering the support for seed investment, and reforms to Enterprise Investment Schemes and Venture Capital Trusts in order to improve their effectiveness.
Octopus chief executive Simon Rogerson commented: “At Octopus we believe it is vital that the UK has an efficient and effective seed and venture capital structure, as it is in the interest of the smaller companies we support, and the investors and advisers who entrust us with the management of their money. Continued improvement of these schemes is a good thing, and we want to make sure that hundreds of smaller companies, thousands of advisers, and tens of thousands of investors are fairly represented in this consultation process.”
