§ Lord Juddasked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they are taking to encourage combined heat and power schemes as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions; what percentage of United Kingdom generating capacity they intend should be made up to such schemes; and what is their timetable for achieving this objective. [HL710]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Whitty)The Government have put in place a range of measures to support good quality CHP. These include climate change levy exemption; enhanced capital allowances; business rating exemption for plant and machinery and information and advice services provided through the Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme. A new Community Energy programme from April 2002 will provide grants to support the installation of good quality CHP.
The Government will be issuing a draft CHP strategy in the coming months which will set out the measures needed to achieve the target to more than double good quality CHP electrical capacity to at least 10,000MWe by 2010.
Based on current estimates of expected UK capacity for the electricity supply industry, published in the DTI's paper EP68, the Government's target of 10,000MWe of CHP capacity in 2010 would account for between 13 and 15 per cent of total UK generation capacity.