The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announcement today that it is consulting on plans that would see rooftop and solar PV farm projects between 1MW and 5MW no longer qualifying for a key subsidy, the Renewable Obligation, from April next year. The cost is estimated to be about £3 per annum on people’s energy bills (1) and is tiny compared to the £7.9billion the taxpayer paid towards nuclear clean-up in 2013/14 (2) and the billions that will be poured into a new generation of nuclear power plants.
London has about 500 farms (3) and Jenny Jones has previously advocated solar PV on farms with low quality soils with planning conditions that minimise visual impact, boost biodiversity and ensure continued agricultural use.
Jenny Jones AM said:
“London’s solar industry will be stopped before it has properly got going. 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. The Government’s disingenuous claims that they are protecting the public from price hikes fail to disguise their real intention of retarding the growth of solar and wind energy. By plunging this successful and growing industry into chaos, they are clearing a path for their preferred energy future dominated by nuclear and fracking that no one wants”
“At a time when we really need solar to play a major role in our energy mix and energy security, Government should be getting right behind it, not undermining and stifling its growth”
Editors Notes
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33619017
(2) http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/05/analysis-how-decc-spends-its-annual-budget/
(3) /sites/default/files/archives/archive-assembly-reports-plansd-growing-food.pdf