Seb Berry, Head of Public Affairs at Solarcentury comments:
“Today’s DECC announcements on solar FiTs and confirmation of the early closure of the Renewables Obligation (RO), suggest that Paris has changed nothing. Indeed worse than that, the Government is spinning a projected decrease in the annual market for solar to 2020 as utterly consistent with COP21 and the now urgent need to accelerate our transition to a zero carbon economy. Despite the mantra of protection for “hard working families,” the Government has taken the axe to the only UK renewable that has a realistic plan to be off support mechanisms by 2020, with the inevitably negative effect on UK innovation, jobs and investment. The increase in generation tariffs for smaller solar PV installations compared to the ridiculous numbers in the original consultation are welcome but the rigid deployment caps mean that this is now a scheme for the few rather than the many.
The four week “pause” to the scheme from 15 January is particularly unwelcome, the total opposite of the “transparency, longevity, certainty” that we were once promised by a Tory energy Minister. Nor can the FiT outcome be divorced from the double whammy of the early closure of the RO and an end to grandfathering for solar projects under the RO, the only renewables technology to be hit with that retrospective change.
Today’s announcements are a million miles away from the “solar revolution” that the Secretary of State promised the country back in June.”