In 2010 the Feed-In-Tariff (FITs) scheme started under a Labour government with cross party support started.
It has been such a huge success at 43p per kilowatt Hour paid for electricity generated this way and has hugely outstripped expected demand but also committed large costs going forward.
So with very little notice the current government has drastically cut back the subsidy to 21p per Kwh. Ouch.
I’m sure the logic behind the cut is right in that it was going to blow the entire budget and result in the scheme closing around 2013. The classic British start/stop policy. Rather than partially strangling such an industry more money should have been found to make it a softer landing.
Instead of hitting the renewable energy generation target in 2020, with a softer landing admittedly taking more resources now, we could have really exceeded the target. What is so brilliant about this scheme is that most people taking up the scheme are individual households. All the research shows such micro generating households really get into energy saving.
So go on Chris Huhne, extract more money from the Treasury for this. We’re creating a new industry to Britain – 100,000 households so far when we have 22 million homes means this industry need a factor or two higher capacity to really transform British renewable energy.
Strategically, making us less dependant upon global fossil fuel energy prices has to be cheaper in the long run.
Thank goodness for Liberal Democrat councillors, I’ve got both thermal and photovoltaic panels, hopefully the latter scraping in just in time to get the higher FIT tariff. I wrote to my local LibDem MP who responded with Tory style rhetoric, whilst the following week claiming success in getting the go-ahead for an unnecessary by-pass being built on green land to enable rich people from one suburb to get to the airport 10 minutes quicker. I voted LibDem as I believe they were the most ‘green’ of the mainstream parties, only to be dismayed by the general lack of interest in the MPs, it seems the Councillors are the only ones interested in getting this country green, and thus providing jobs, well done in giving me back some faith. Your article was refreshing in demanding more cash, perhaps we could source this from the various subsidies helping the non renewable sector, nuclear for instance, which costs a vast amount.
What I don’t understand is that there is £110bn over next 10 years for 8x nuclear power stations. Barker & Huhne state 21p is “in line with Germany’s FiT”. Correct. BUT: German households energy bills remain the same as 2008. They have had a PV industry for 10 years and closed 1x nuclear power station as PV output replaced (and exceeded) the output from it. So, if we want to be more like Germany, why don’t we plan for 7 and use the additional funds to bolster the FiT budget? (Which BTW is not a ring fenced pot of cash so cannot be exceeded anyway)? All a bit odd.