Next month, the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC) will also publish Minor & Necessary Modifications Guidance, which provides advice on how an applicant may apply for a minor and necessary modification to the Standard Terms, on which potential CfD applicants can start early engagement in June.
The government will release statutory notices, including administrative strike prices, pot structure and delivery years in July and expects to have the framework for AR7 published the same month.
Before opening the seventh round in August, the government will also publish the final versions of the CfD Standard Terms and Conditions, the generic version of the CfD Agreement and contract variants for AR7, and invite potential applicants to make their formal request to LCCC for minor and necessary modifications.
After the completion of the AR7 qualification, bidding and allocation processes, the government expects to sign CfD contracts with the selected offshore wind developers between January and the end of March 2026.
In the meantime, DESNZ is running further consultation on one of the changes proposed for AR7, which involves relaxing eligibility requirements for unconsented fixed-bottom offshore wind projects.
The government already held a consultation on this in February/March, which it says attracted a wide range of views on the proposal. On 27 May, DESNZ invited feedback on potential technical and drafting amendments that would be required to the scheme rules and contract terms to ensure the practical implementation of this policy, should the government decide to proceed with it. The government says it is considering its response to stakeholder feedback on this proposal and will confirm its final decision later this summer, before AR7 opens to applications.
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UK Gov’t Working on CfD Scheme Reforms to Accelerate Offshore Wind Buildout
The UK government has proposed several changes to the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme for Allocation Round 7 (AR7), including extending phasing, which is currently only available for fixed-bottom offshore wind, to floating wind in CfD Allocation Round 7.
Many of the reforms to the CfD scheme were set out in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan the DESNZ issued in December 2024. The action plan is a roadmap to an (almost) fully clean power system in the UK by 2030, with clean sources making up 95 per cent of Great Britain’s electricity generation and gas being used for no more than 5 per cent of total generation.