Feeling the Heat: UK's Solar Panel Subsidy Cuts

Firstly I’d like to wish all my readers a HAPPY NEW YEAR, and apologise for the not so cheery blog post you’re about to read.

You may have noticed that the news was dominated by reports over government subsidy cuts to households installing solar panels - ‘just days after agreeing to move swiftly to a low-carbon energy future’ at COP21 (Macalister, 2015).

Is this a step backwards in the UKs transition to a green future?

Does it undermine the efforts made in the domestic arena to tackle climate change?

“These cuts are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”

                                                                                    ~ Carrington (2015)

Financial incentives have ‘encouraged the installation of solar panels’ in the past and are crucial to fostering ‘environmental citizenship’ (Brignall, 2015; Upham, 2012). Subsidies including the ‘feed-in tariff’ (Fit) have been labelled by Greenpeace UK as ‘vital’ to facilitating household contribution to the renewable industry and a low-carbon UK (Casson, 2015).

So, their removal is certainly questionable, and will alter future household investment in renewable energy and perhaps the survival of the UK’s renewable industry itself! – not the best start to 2016!

Table 1) % of respondents citing obstacles to installing renewable technology 

- please observe PV and Solar Panels (Upham, 2012)

Stating that ‘policy reaches into everyday lives and private spaces’, Bulkeley’s (2015) paper highlights the challenge of both ‘unlocking carbon’ and ‘locking in new and renewable forms of energy’, rendering the subsidy cuts as even more puzzling!

What’s worse, fossil fuel subsidies have NOT been cut, providing no means of incentivizing people to curb fossil fuel consumption (Coca, 2015)! Confused? Me too!

“When the cost of technologies come down, so should the consumer-funded support.”

                                                                        ~ Amber Rudd

 (Secretary of the Department of Energy & Climate Change)

However, when talking to Paul Wilson from Baxi SenerTec (04/01/2015), I realised it’s not quite so black and white. There are genuine issues with Solar Panels in the UK and reasons for government cuts.

Issues:

• Weather is ‘not conductive’ to generating continuous heat & electricity
• Electrical grids ‘cannot cope’ with the power sent back to them, causing “dumping”

Cut Justification:

• Not considered a ‘viable renewable energy source for the UK market’
• Payback schemes give ‘companies, not individuals, the opportunity to profit from renewable energies’
• Solar PV seen as a profitable market as opposed to ‘something that helps the planet’
• The UK is the only country that offers government payback for using renewable energy sources

Paul also explained how the UK is ‘on track to achieve the CO₂ reductions set by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’, and that in comparison to global leaders in CO₂ production, we’re ‘well down the list’ – a refreshingly positive outlook of the UK’s energy mix.

Table 2) Territorial MtCO₂ - UK ranking 15th in 2014 (Global Carbon Atlas, 2014)

So, what’s next for household contribution? Without solar panels how can we help?

This is certainly a domestic dilemma which requires attention.