The renewables NFFO - A review

There have been three Orders of the renewables NFFO and a fourth has recently been announced. This paper explains the creation of the NFFO, the application procedures for each Order and the status of the contracts for each Order. It goes on to discuss the key lessons to be learnt from the process: namely that a market enablement programme should coordinate with the R&D programme; second, that competition as the basis for support of renewables, while bringing prices down rapidly, has a number of disbenefits; third, that the NFFO process has led to the development of renewable energy industry in the UK with a stake in its future; fourth, the deployment of renewable energy technologies as a result of the NFFO has led to a dawning of an understanding by the renewable energy industry of the key issues that renewable energy has to address and the importance of the attitudes of the financial institutions and electricity systems to the successful outcome of those issues; fifth, it describes the development of a de facto policy for renewable energy by OFFER; and finally, that the renewable support mechanism should be coordinated with a planning policy.