Government drip-feed for solar

Solarcentury puts Government's latest drip-feed for solar in context.

The Government's latest budget surprised many people with a £50m allocation for microgeneration technologies.

This brings Government support for renewable microgeneration, gas micro CHP and energy efficiency, via the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) beginning in April, to a total of £80m over the next three years.

The Government's LCBP defines the micro-renewables family as having six main members: solar photovoltaics (PV), solar thermal, micro-wind, ground-source heat pumps, fuel cells and biomass boilers.

In 2003 the Government's Energy White Paper committed to a 2002-2012 programme of support for photovoltaics (PV) "in line with our competitors" Germany and Japan.

However, as solarcentury CEO Jeremy Leggett points out: "Our competitors have support programmes for solar PV measured in billions of £s, not millions".

"Divide £80m by six technologies and you come up with less than £5m per year per technology, and that does not include energy efficiency, or the gas microCHP that the DTI slipped into the supposedly renewables-only programme at the eleventh hour".

"The Major Demonstration Programme for PV, which ends this month, allocated £12m for PV last year, so our funding is probably falling".

"By contrast, Japan has spent an average of £100m a year for ten years in building its PV industry".

"California is investing $2.9 billion over ten years".

"Germany pays premium prices for solar electricity, guaranteed for 20 years, financed by a tiny levy on the rates of all consumers".

"These programmes have the kind of scale and continuity that attract private investors".

"In the UK we have another drip feed, for a few years".

"The government continues to fall far short of its rhetoric on the seriousness of climate change".

"Meanwhile, UK plc continues to lose out in some of the fastest growing markets in the world, markets which hold the key to energy security and surviving global warming".

This is the fourth successive drip feed wrung from the government by solar PV industry lobbying since the programme of support for PV began in 2002.

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