Greg Barker, Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change is expected to announce the proposed rates and timescale of the Comprehensive Feed-in Tariff review in just a matter of minutes.
After weeks of speculation and rumoured rates from 9p up to 20p coupled with leaked documents and supposed timescales, the UK solar industry will today hear just what to expect in the coming years. To date the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has kept quiet on the specifics of the review, saying only that the current rates are too high, and therefore must be cut.
At last week’s Solar Power UK conference in Birmingham the Minister explained, “Much of the growth in PV has been as much about consumers accessing the Government-backed tariff as accessing the technology. High net worth individuals chasing returns which are now easily reaching double figures at a time when interest rates for savers have collapsed to an historic low. That can’t be right. And I know responsible voices in the industry have been worried about this for some time.
“The Green Economy does not exist in a bubble. Yet the subsidised returns we have seen on solar PV investments – funded from consumer energy bills – are unsustainable at a time when National Savings have pulled their index linked bonds, interest on savings accounts has plummeted and the stock market has dropped.”
DECC is expected to publish the much-anticipated document at 10am this morning as soon as it has been laid in Parliament. Full details and analysis will follow.
