Dr. Paul McGowan:

To be clear, the renewable energy support scheme - the current REFIT scheme - is a Government scheme and, as a result, the CRU does not determine the rates that apply. In the case of a power generation facility that is burning biomass in order to produce electricity, for example, the Senator is correct that it may well be able to run on 24 hours a day, seven days a week but it may also be subject to downtime for maintenance and on foot of unexpected outages. There are risks associated with the operation of such a plant, even though it might seem to be very predictable. One can never assume that such a plant will achieve 100%. In the case of a wind project, as far as I am aware, wind developers carry out an awful lot of analysis at their sites to determine the expected average wind yield and what they can expect in terms of output. They can work out their economics based on that analysis. We are talking about two very different types of analysis but both include risks to the developer.