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John Parnell compares the UK’s “bonfire of renewables”, to use a phrase coined by Jenny Jones this week, with a far more different approach in Washington, highlighted by this week’s appearance from US vice president Joe Biden at US solar industry conference Solar Power International.

Solar Trade Association head of external affairs Leonie Greene discusses its efforts to lobby government since the feed-in tariff proposals were made public and what you, the industry, can do to help.

I have met a number of officials from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) over the years and hold them in very high regard. Make no mistake, these are smart people we’re dealing with. Which makes the recent Feed in Tariff (FiT) review all the more perplexing.

With the Department of Energy and Climate Change publishing their devastating proposals for the feed-in tariff scheme, I’ve written to the Prime Minister to ask him to explain his government’s policy. I don’t hold out much hope for a response but needed to get this off my chest.

The Conservative government has shown a complete lack of respect by leaking details of subsidy cuts via unofficial press briefings, something which is just further evidence of a double-standard when it comes to its attitude to energy generation, Liam Stoker writes.

At this year’s awards, we’ll be asking you the industry to help install solar at a hospital in Uganda, an install that could literally save lives.

Much has been said and many column inches dedicated to just what the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s proposed changes to renewable energy subsidies will do to the industry itself. But more often than not the secondary victims – those outside of the industry and, as a result, overlooked – will be hit just as hard, writes Liam Stoker.

According to the latest release of Solar Media’s UK Ground-Mount Report 3 – Opportunity Pipeline report, the UK’s pipeline of large-scale solar farms (>250kW) has grown now to 3.3GW. This is due mainly to an increase in applications received by LPAs on 22 July, and an uptick in rejected (or called-in) sites to appeals.

Parker Dann Town Planning Consultancy’s Debbie Marriage discusses how the joint DECC/DCLG statement on fast-tracking proposals will put even more pressure on not just the energy industry, but on local planning authorities, housing developers and other sectors too.

The ballot papers are out, canvassing has entered overdrive and yet still energy and the environment appear to be little more than afterthoughts for the four candidates for the Labour Party leadership. What does Labour’s failure to mount a challenge to the Tory’s green energy culls say about the party?