The Solar Trade Association is dismayed at yesterday’s announcement of an early review of the feed in tariff by DECC Minister Chris Huhne. It brings into question the government’s true commitment to renewable energy. The announcement adds further uncertainty in the industry preventing businesses in the sector from growing, recruiting and meeting their business plans. And this compounds the uncertainty caused by the government’s inability to finalise and implement the overdue Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)..
The feed in tariff has been a huge success for businesses, homeowners and social tenants in the UK with more than 14,000 homes having the technology installed since the launch of the scheme ten months ago – many of them for free.
The nature of the feed in tariff was altered without consultation during the spending review. However despite this the new budget capped feed in tariff is still running at deployment rates that are well below the forecast for the year. To date this year less than 35MW of new PV systems have been installed.
The justification for this early review is concern by the Minister that “large scale solar plants” will somehow blight the landscape and use up all of the feed in tariff payments available. To date NOT ONE of these systems has been installed in the UK, and deployment is likely to be hampered by grid connection and planning issues anyway.
In the announcement all systems above 50kW were classed as “large scale” in a move that shifts the landscape for all involved in the sector and will jeopardise many community and small business owned installations. To alter the definition of large scale systems severely questions the government’s commitment to renewable energy in the UK, and is quite frankly absurd.
Chairman of the Solar Trade Association, Howard Johns said “This is really bad news for the solar industry in the UK. Last week Ministers welcomed the study showing that 17,000 jobs would be created by the industry in 2011. This week has seen them once again changing the goal posts and threatening investment and jobs in the sector.”
