2Nov, 2011
Feed in Tarriff

In my opinion the FiT needed cutting and I think 50% was fair, it is the highest subsidised renewable in the UK, and it is paid for by you and me in higher utility bills, the people in the PV market say it is too short notice, they have been given 1 1/2  months’ notice, how much time do they want, a year?, why should everyone pay higher prices for this scheme any longer than needed, it needed reducing and reducing now, renewables is supposed to be about saving energy, reducing bills and in doing so reducing the carbon emissions of the property, but with the heavily subsidised FiT it became an investment, where people were getting a 12% – 15% return on their investment, this was never the intention of the scheme and led to large scale solar farms been installed and the rent a roof brigade coming in, it is these projects that forced the dramatic drop in my opinion.
There are other renewables on the market, but these were getting overlooked because people could see that they could make money from the FiT, this has given the PV industry an unfair advantage over all the other renewables, hopefully we might start to see more of an uptake of other renewables, although PV still has a much higher subsidy than any of the other renewables, for example, PV has 21 pence per kWh, under the RHI thermal solar will get 8.5 pence per kWh.

I keep hearing people saying that 25,000 jobs will be lost because of this cut, where are these people, where has that figure come from, there are only 120,000 Registered Gas Engineers in the UK, so for 25,000 people to lose their jobs in the PV industry, how large is this market supposed to be in the UK, what percentage of the market does this 25,000 represent, from the manufacturing side the majority of these panels come from abroad.

It is now time that we have a more level playing field for renewables, let’s get back to what should be the main focus for renewables, saving energy, reducing bills and reducing the carbon emissions in properties, not a way to make money, subsidise should be about encouraging the uptake of renewables, but the FiT led to abuse of the generous subsidy.