The government’s plan to force solar developers to use Contracts for Difference (CfDs) instead of ROCs from April 2015 has caused uproar amongst the UK solar industry.

The industry is warning government that solar will not be able to compete with onshore wind by 2015, a fact that will mean that solar will not be able to deploy under the auction mechanism.

However, it could be that the finance sector would actually prefer to move towards CfDs. Below, Osborne Clarke’s Alan John and Neas Energy’s Lars Weber explain why the government’s new mechanism could actually mean that the cost of lending could come down for solar developers: