Engineering news
The Department of Energy and Climate Change has revealed its final decision on the new Feed-in Tariff rates for 2016 and beyond, just days after the Paris Agreement was announced at this year's UN Climate conference.
Reductions in payments under the Tariff scheme for energy generated by new small-scale renewables are not as severe as originally proposed earlier on in the year, when ministers announced an 87% cut for domestic solar electricity compared with current levels.
The solar industry, which had said the cuts could cause tens of thousands of job losses, warned that the new tariffs are not high enough to support the sector, and ministers in fact need to do more to boost solar power.
Under the new agreement, domestic solar panels will receive 4.39p per kWh of renewable electricity generated, 65% less than current levels.
Paul Barwell, chief executive of the Solar Trade Association, said: “Government has partially listened. It’s not what we needed, but it’s better than the original proposals, and we will continue to push for a better deal for what will inevitably be a more consolidated industry with fewer companies.
“In a world that has just committed to strengthened climate action in Paris and which sees solar as the future, the UK Government needs to get behind the British solar industry. Allocating only around 1% of its clean power budget to new solar is too little, particularly when solar is now so cost-effective.”
However, the Solar Trade Association has welcomed the fact that the Government has not increased energy efficiency requirements to be eligible for the solar feed-in tariff, and has not made any changes to how the tariffs are indexed over time or to the export tariff when electricity is sold back to the grid.
The new tariffs will come into force from 8 February, and the deadline for projects to receive the current higher tariffs is 15 January. The decision comes after a prolonged campaign by the Solar Trade Association and many supporting organisations from the Church of England to the CBI.
Alasdair Cameron, a Friends of the Earth renewable energy campaigner, said: “Less than a week after the UK Government agreed in Paris to keep global temperatures well below two degrees, the Government has shown its true colours - and they're certainly not green.
“These huge, misguided cuts to UK solar are a massive blow for jobs and the economy, and further undermine the Government's already tarnished credibility on tackling climate change.”
In October, Mark Group, a solar installer based in Leicester, announced that more than 900 jobs were at risk as the company went into administration.
Mark Group employs around 1,165 people across the UK, and says that the government is to blame for the move with its recent proposal to cut the Feed-in Tariff for residential solar by up to 87%.
The company, which was founded in 1974, had previously suffered from the slow-down in the domestic energy efficiency market caused by the failure of the Green Deal energy efficiency scheme and on-going uncertainty over the future of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme, cutting 670 jobs as a result last September.
In response to industry, secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, said: “My priority is to ensure energy bills for hardworking families and businesses are kept as low as possible whilst ensuring there is a sensible level of support for low carbon technologies that represent value for money.
“We have to get the balance right and I am clear that subsidies should be temporary, not part of a permanent business model. When the cost of technologies come down, so should the consumer-funded support.”