Government consultation on solar PV: 87% cut in FIT support tariffs

Home News & Events Latest News Government consultation on solar PV: 87% cut in FIT support tariffs

The government has just announced a consultation which will reduce solar FIT tariffs by 87% from around 12p/kWh to 1.5p/kWh. This reduction has the potential to significantly reduce or completely kill off any future domestic and community solar PV installations in the UK, at a time when the government is providing significant support and subsidies for fracking and nuclear power, orders of magnitude greater than currently being used by solar PV. As background information the petition states the following “Subsidies for ALL renewables currently cost £3.5bn yr compared to £26bn yr in subsidies for fossil fuels. That’s £400 per year per household to support the fossil fuel industry”.

It would be great if you could consider signing this parliamentary petition to let your feelings be known to the government.

If you have the time it would help if you could also respond to the government’s consultation on the proposed changes, whose deadline is 23 October 2015. Transition Bath will also be responding on your behalf but given we feel the consultation is ideologically driven rather based on sound economics it is unlikely the government will change their minds? Onshore wind and solar PV are much cheaper electricity sources than nuclear, fossil fuels (including subsidies and externalities like pollution and climate change) and offshore wind, but the government seems to be determined to kill off the cheaper, cleaner renewables.

For comparison purposes support for the following technologies are as follows:

Hinkley Point New Nuclear Power Station9.25p/kWh CFD
Onshore wind (now banned)2.8p/kWh FIT + 4.5p/kWh export
Solar PV (proposed, mid scale e.g. BWCE)1p/kWh FIT + 4.5p/kWh export
Offshore wind12p/kWh CFD

Although both Onshore Wind and Solar PV are more intermittent than Nuclear and Offshore Wind, and are therefore of less value, we don’t understand why the government is focussing the more expensive unclear and offshore technologies and attempting to drastically reduce onshore wind and solar PV, which should also be cheaper to maintain in the long term and don’t have clean up costs and significant risks (nuclear)?