Solar Subsidies Next To Feel Government Heat

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd vowed to end the “blank cheque” that was being handed to green energy firms, saying the subsidies should fall as solar power became cheaper to produce.

“Removing support for the lowest cost renewables calls into question once more the government’s commitment to decarbonisation targets, sending out a worrying signal in the run up to the Paris climate change conference”.

In a statement, she added: “Our support has driven down the cost of renewable energy significantly”.

The proposals come just a month after the government said it would scrap new subsidies for onshore wind farms from April next year.

The United Kingdom will cut incentives for renewable power under a push to reduce consumer energy bills.

The move follows the announcement of the same restriction on solar farms with more than 5MW of capacity and will be seen as a major blow to the solar farm sector, particularly given the government has refused to confirm when its alternative clean energy support scheme, the contract for difference (CfD) price support mechanism, will continue.

“We are well behind the rest of the country and this cut to the subsidy will make it much harder to turn plans for big schemes into reality”, Jones said.

Investment in larger-scale solar projects has also helped to reduce the cost of solar technology in general.

The revision of the subsidies could result in the closure of small-scale solar projects across Britain.

‘We can’t have a situation where industry has a blank cheque and that cheque is paid for by people’s bills.

Ms Rudd said: “We cant have a system where there is basically unlimited headroom for new renewables including solar”.

Investors said the government’s u-turn had undermined the industry’s case for investing in renewable electricity production.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change announced a raft of measures designed to control the predicted overspend within the Levy Control Framework but failed to outline any detail over rumoured feed-in tariff cuts. It’s £3 for solar then it comes to other sources as well.

‘Cutting the subsidies now will see businesses go bust and investment dry up.

STA head of external affairs Leonie Greene said: “There is no pledge in the Conservative manifesto about cutting support for solar, so we are disappointed by this move”.

Friends of the Earth energy campaigner Alasdair Cameron said: ‘This won’t lower electricity bills – all new energy is being subsidised to some extent and solar is already cheaper than nuclear and will soon be cheaper than gas from new power stations.

‘It is galling when tax breaks and subsidies have propped up the oil, gas and nuclear industries for decades. Jobs will go and emissions will stay higher at a time when policies and funding should be in place to ensure quite the opposite.

Mr Whitehead said: “The government appears to be putting its eggs in more expensive baskets while taking the eggs out of the cheaper baskets in order to fund the more expensive baskets with what is happening with onshore wind and solar”.

Industry body the Solar Trade Association (STA) said the move would hit large rooftop schemes, which the Government has been keen to back, as well as solar farms. Grandfathering is the guarantee that a certain level of subsidy will be provided throughout the lifetime of a renewable energy project once built.