Is the last minute attempt by Friends of The Earth and two solar installation companies going to ‘Save the Solar Industry?’

The Friends of the Earth is urging the Government to get a grip on the urgent need to invest in the UK’s green energy – and to make the feed-in tariff scheme more ambitious, not less..is this last minute attempt by Friends of The Earth and two solar installation companies going to ‘Save the Solar Industry?’

Even if they are successful next week in their efforts to effect a judicial review, are they right anyway? DECC ‘s decision to ‘slash’ the subsidy does in fact seem likely to have fallen short of their initial intentions to reduce subsidy levels to 9 ppkWh, that is to say, things could have been at lot worse.

As part of the Accelerating a Low Carbon Economy: Feed-in tariffs consultation workshop attended today, the general consensus of the Solar Fitting organisations in attendance, was that 21p per unit ‘was workable’ and in fact was ‘pretty much bringing the sector back to where things were two years ago’. There were also suggestions that the ‘Solar Vultures’; the typically larger commercially financed projects might ultimately be better for the whole development of sustainable energy for the UK’s Energy Security requirements.

The current situation seems to be driven more by politically motivated attention to the original intention of support for Feed-In-Tariffs for the Domestic / Social sector vs. the aspirations of the large Energy Suppliers; as the last thing the BIG6 want is for anyone to start generating their own energy, never mind having to pay them for it.

Alternative Energy is here to stay, the real battle as ever, is whether there is anyone with the balls in Government to actually stand up to the global energy providers [and their shareholders]. Otherwise this ‘competitive’ energy market will continue to play an increasing role in the suppression of the UK in these dire economic times.

Solar will play a significant future for us, so long as it is managed sensibly and not stifled by some knee-jerk politically motivated [or lobbied for] suppression.