News

St John’s C of E church at Farsley, Leeds, has installed 16 solar panels on its roof, reports the Yorkshire Evening Post. The church, which was donated £11,000 by an anonymous member of the congregation, will use the feed-in tariff payments to raise money for church funds.

Adam Twine, the green entrepreneur behind wind and solar co-operatives at Westmill Farm, has expressed his dismay at MPs who wrote to David Cameron challenging the subsidy afforded to wind energy.

Government has published a consultation on a draft Statutory Instrument that will enable the licensing of a new national provider of communications services to and from gas and electricity smart meters, to be referred to as the Data and Communications Company (“DCC”).

Government must begin to recognise the potential of renewable energy in the community sector if the UK is to reach its legally-binding climate change, emissions and fuel poverty targets.

Scientists from Cambridge University have developed new solar cells that could increase the maximum efficiency of solar panels by over 25 percent.

Alliance Homes, a Somerset-based housing association is looking at developing a legal framework that would see it become one of the first landlords to set up as a Green Deal provider.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has published its Impact Assessment for the announced reforms to the feed-in tariff scheme.

In its response to the consultation on the comprehensive review for solar feed-in tariff rates, DECC has published its intention to introduce a multi-installation tariff rate for aggregated projects.

In the wake of industry-changing announcements from DECC today, solar industry insiders were invited to a roundtable discussion with Greg Barker at the Department’s offices. The meeting was called to gauge industry’s reaction and explain DECC’s ambitions for solar in the UK.

DECC’s Phase 2A consultation document, which outlines proposals for a new cost-control mechanism, includes a number of other options that Government is looking to introduce, namely; reducing the tariff lifetime from 25 years to 20, raising the export tariff rate and introducing a different indexation method for tariff levels.