Friends of the Earth have confirmed that Friday next week (13 Jan) has been set as the date for the Court of Appeal to consider the Governments appeal re the High Court’s FITs decision. The outcome of this appeal will dictate the current Feed In Tariff rate.

If the Government’s application for permission to appeal is granted then the appeal itself will be held on the same day.

Also an interview with Greg Barker, the Minister for Energy and Climate Change, was published by Business Green yesterday. In it Barker warned that the FITs scheme has already exceeded its budget for the current financial year. He said “There's some flexibility in the levy control framework [spending cap] on a year-by-year basis... But we have our budget and the Chancellor is not going to reopen the spending review" & according to the article stressed that the Chancellor is concerned about upward pressure on energy bills and the onus is on DECC to make best use of the funds available to support all renewable energy technologies eligible for FITs. Barker said he had to be "circumspect" over what he could say about the appeal case and refused to be drawn on the government's contingency planning should it lose the appeal. However, he reiterated that the continuation of the current FITs tariff rate would have "catastrophic consequences" for the scheme

Barker also confirmed that DECC is on track to publish (i) its response to the FITs consultation & (ii) the final part of the comprehensive FITs review by the end of January & that "The proposal for comprehensive reform of the feed-in tariff system will much more closely align the falling cost of technology with the level of subsidy available - we need to move closer to the system in Germany where the degression in subsidies is more predictable."