Ministry of Industry and Trade: Renewable sources receive adequate support

PRESS RELEASE OF THE CHAMBER OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES
The Chamber of Renewable Energy Sources reacts to just published results of inspection of adequacy of financial support in its sector.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade published results of inspection of adequacy of support for electricity generation from renewable energy sources this afternoon. The results confirmed that the granted support is adequate and that it does not represent an excessive support.

It is the first of a series of inspections of public support for renewable energy sources. This wave concerned the operational support of the sources put into operation between 2006 and 2008 and it was carried out using the sector inquiry method. Results of the next wave regarding the renewable energy sources put into operation in 2009 can be expected next year.

Štěpán Chalupa, chairman of the Chamber of Renewable Energy Sources, said: “The result did not surprise me. It was confirmed for these sources that the operating support is adequate. It remains to solve the cases of the sources that, in addition to an operating subsidy, received also an investment subsidy. We claimed from the beginning that these inspections are unnecessary in the vast majority of cases and the adequacy of the support was generally confirmed also by Brussels.” 

“For further investigation, it will be important that the proposed system of adequacy testing has effective tools to deal with possible minor findings in a fair and efficient way, both from the state and operators point of view. The current proposal and the method used seem to be fine in this respect.”

“I do not expect the next wave of investigation to bring any fundamentally different findings. This will also apply to the closely monitored large solar installations, which initially received a disproportionately high feed-in tariff. Their problem should be already solved by the performed withholding tax. The Chamber of Renewable Energy Sources itself proposed the so-called sector tax of 10 % already in 2013 and it pushed it through against the will of some, in our opinion irresponsible, entrepreneurs in the branch, whereby this sector tax reduced one-time-only the too high profit of the solar power plants from the critical period of time.”

Sources: Web of the Ministry of Industry and Trade , Web of the Chamber of Renewable Energy Sources