Typical. Some of the population manage find a way out of the grip of the power cartels & into sustainable, self-sufficiency.

Now the rug is to be yanked out from under them so that subsidies can be given to the cartels because they refuse to invest in off-shore wave power etc. without yet more money from the public.

I don't think anyone has asked for a return to the 43.1 p/kWh. I am still not sure why we cannot just do what other sensible countries do and do measured reductions. Perhaps a one-off cut to 33p or something and a 5% reduction per year.

Also - since the payments for this come out of general electricity tariffs (i.e. all our bills) I am not clear what impact this has on the budget.

Perhaps the real issue is that the large energy companies do not like this form of decentralised electricity because of the impact it would have on per-household margins.

Still let us hope the Minister is right and that solar is on the brink of something huge.

It all sounded a bit too hey! here-come-the-good times euphoric - until I saw who Gregory Barker is. A friend of the poor old farming community too: around us just about every farmhouse has a dozen or more panels on its roof. But that's nothing compared with the £500,000 they get for hosting a small wind farm.

the shame of it is that Solar needs to be scaled on a global basis, and that the coalition's move to end feed-in tariffs is a Red Flag to business on this score, and denies the UK the opportunity to be a leader

the cost curve on Solar is changing, but the time to end the feed-in tariffs was not now - one more the UK is instead being left behind

forget about the "greenest government", if this coalition wants to be a green government, encouraging the sort of positive change that would be good for UK business in the long run, it would reconsider this flawed decision by this MP

countries that show they are moving into the 21st century with vision are the ones that will succeed going forward

If even 50% of houses in the UK had solar panels installed the reduction in electricity generation from coal, gas and nuclear power stations would be massive.

If 50% of businesses similarly had solar energy, the energy suppliers in the UK and europe would have to run their businesses more honestly, taking a reasonable profit instead of their monopoly position which allows them to make obscene profits at the expense of the old,infirm and poor in this country.

The UK dependence on oil & gas from other countries would virtually disappear.

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more misleading piffle.

And how much does Greg Barker look like Dr Cox from Scrubs?

PS Here's Greggy

Dr Climate Minister.

"But a return to 43p could be catastrophic for the budget."

If this is

"the greenest government ever"

- why not allocate some central govt funds to cover this - why is the RHI centrally funded but the FiTs not?

There must be hundreds of less worthy projects that could be cut to cover the £360m (is that the latest 'cap' figure? I get confused with all these consultations!).

Mr Barker, you are either incompetent or corrupt since you say you want solar yet all the facts say the reverse.

Getting to some facts to refute your reasoning first.

The best micro wind tariffs are 36.2p compared to the best solar tariffs at 43.3p. The new tariff at 21p is around half the wind tariff.

To take this the other way, large scale solar (the most cost effective kind) has been decimated down to around 8p in August (from around 17p), which is lower than large scale wind at between 8p and 19p.

In other words, you are saying that solar is 4 times the cost of wind, that is just not true and makes you look incompetent or corrupt.

Further, the idea that solar electricity should only be installed in well insulate properties (energy efficient) is complete nonsense. No-one disagrees that energy efficiency isn't important, just that discouraging solar because of it, is a very badly misjudged idea and again leads one to believe that you are simply kiling solar to appease those in big business and especially, in your case, the oil industry.

The true logic would go something like this; electricity is produced by solar and electricity is very rarely used for heating. You will find that it is gas, coal and oil that are used for heating in almost all properties. If you really want to encourage people to use energy efficiency, you need to cap the fuel they use for heating, that is cap gas/oil and coal. Installing solar electricity is a benefit and has absolutely nothing to do with insulation.

Your energy efficiency policy requirement for solar means you are stopping a benefit whilst missing the opportunity to do the right and effective thing, cap oil/gas/coal for those with non-energy efficient properties. Again, your thinking is illogical leading people to believe that you are either corrupt or incompetent.

You have to ask, are you are the 'climate change' minister in anything but name? You are trying to save everyone at most 80p on their annual bill but don't seem to mind that fossil fuels are rising quickly and just added nearly £200 to an annual bill. You want to put 20,000+ solar people out of work and risk the country paying higher penalties on our CO2 emissions for missing our renewables targets.

Further, you broadcast a message that the UK cannot be trusted hence raising the financing costs for future investments.

Further, there is the fact that you have been deemed to have acted illegally already.

Lastly, you talk about 'FIT budgets' and the financial crisis, you have a 33GW target for wind and a 2GW target for solar which of which over a third is used up already. Perhaps you should be thankful that solar is creating so many jobs, and is so successful and is not using government money. As you say, bring the tariffs down, but fairly, and install more. The 2GW target obviously needs to be re-assessed more in-line with Germany. They are installing over 50GW by 2020 at a rate of around 5GW per year, perhaps the UK could have a target of 2GW per year, that would sustain the industry at roughly the size it is now and give us almost 20GW by 2020 and make a huge impact towards our renewables targets.

Solar is a huge success and if handled fairly, by reducing the tariff to perhaps 33p (still below wind) and throwing away the ridiculous notion that energy efficiency should be a requirement for installing micro-solar arbitrarily reducing the market a futher 95%, then you might redeem a little of your credibility and save 10,000s of jobs as well.

The completely undefendable way you have left it leaves me in no doubt that you have been influenced to kill solar, there is no other reasonable conclusion from the evidence of your illegal, illogical, non-sensical and damaging actions.

No-one believes you now, or your government, that you have any good intentions with regard to your green promises or with regard to your ability to pass on as safe a planet to our children as possible, and it is sickening to watch especially because of the obvious nature of politicians being bought by the big energy companies with vast somes of our own money, publicized so openly around the world.

If you really are a climate change minister, you should start acting like it or, as others have indicated, resign.

In case you have forgotten, "We need the planet, the planet does not need us".

Mr Barker, as everyone here will tell you, the tariff cuts were too deep too fast and done in an improper, and illegal way.

Whatever, moving forward, I'd suggest:
1. No coupling between energy efficiency and solar. They're both important, but not linked. Solar panels on a "D" house are just as useful as solar panels on a "A" house. My panels (in Germany) are on the garage. Not sure how that's rated).
2. A solar gets cheaper, the 4KW limit isn't appropriate. If you have to cut the tariff for <4KW, at least extend this to 10KW. In Germany now 5KW is considered a small domestic, and 10KW a large domestic or farm house solution. They're still not really commercial.
3. Get smart meters put in. If solar is to be successful, users have to be encouraged to time their demand when the sun shines.

Unfortunately solar is not such a panacea, as most demand for electricity is when the sun doesn't shine.

If 50% of households (~10 million) had a 5KW system, that's a capacity of 50GW. So on a sunny June day, we could turn off all fossil fuel plants. Any more solar would be wasted, without some break through in energy storage.

This 50GW of capacity will produce an average of about 5GW. And at 6pm in December, when electricity demand is greatest, this 50Gw of capacity will product 0 (zero).

Now if you look at California, Israel, etc, where peak demand is driven by air conditioning, then solar has a huge role to play.

You are right, solar does not have an even power production profile over either a day or during a year. For an entire year compared to the next however, solar does not fluctuate much. In other words, and as you say, it is not a problem of production or of production cost, but of getting that power when we need it.

The answer, that you have not referred to, is not not to use sources like solar, but to develop energy storage.

That is why Germany is investing huge sums in supporting research in energy storage. Who knows what the results will be, hydrogen or hydro or nano-x or something else. The point being that they want to be at the forefront of that new global market, as they are for solar.

What are we doing? You might want to ask Mr Barker about his views on supporting energy storage research.

Is it just me or does the picture for this article look like the panels are photo -shopped onto a picture from the 1970's?

Sounds like there are some positives to be taken from this piece.

Linking the Green Deal to the FIT and RHI is on the table, I hope so, could be a very strong market opportunity. We do need the Green Deal sooner though to make this work. The government needs to underwrite the Golden Rule though as ironically solar panels are the only technology with any certainty of performance as they don't rely on occupancy. If punters are being asked to take out what is in essence a loan based on savings from installations of energy measuers they need some help if it doesn't quite add up in real terms in the field.

The energy efficiency stance is fair, it is a retrospective change, but anyone who takes an holistic approach to energy knows energy efficiency must be a key part of the picture. It might help to delay this option until the Green Deal.

Bridge to a non subsidy based life for solar, presumably grid parity, is exactly what the industry needs.

There is a gap in how FIT can tackle the fuel poor with social housing clients so lets hope the community scheme plans they are alluding to will help with this.

Time for the industry to take this olive branch and develop a solution. Solar has a future and it can work at 21p. The FIT was designed to bring costs down, it has, time for digression.

What olive branch?? "Solar has a future and it can work at 21p." Of course but our dear Minister has so mishandled the running of the scheme since the election that his blessed "budget" is spent and that has absolutely nothing to do with the court case. He should resign and let someone with more competence put right the mess.

This government believes in solar. We see its huge industrial and employment potential. We get the strong case for smart, well-targeted subsidy, to help early deployment and build a thriving UK sector. However that is not the same as a blank cheque. And we are equally determined to stand up for consumers alarmed by rising energy prices and have shown ourselves willing to take action to curb rising energy bills.

Weasel words Mr. Bonkers.
You are either an incorrigible liar or supremely incompetent, quite possibly both.

I recently joined a very small solar business as their second electrician.
They took me on in order to meet the 6 week deadline which you set.
Thanks for the opportunity to get off the dole, but no thanks for the chaos you have sown.

We had six customers signed up for household systems, all investing their savings in good faith. Hard work, but feasible to achieve, or so we thought.

As it turns out, due to the massive increase in demand to meet the absurdly short deadline, the supply chain at our small business scale completely collapsed.
Parts we ordered never arrived when promised, partial deliveries often several weeks late. My boss eventually went to Holland to source the missing components, but too late.
We were forced into dubious practices to get anything working at all. Mating incompatible fittings from different mounting systems, using whatever inverters we could get, despite them being the wrong spec. for our design,

You were taken to court, and told in no uncertain terms by the judge that your actions were unlawful, and your appeal unlikely to succeed. Nonetheless, you went ahead and appealed anyway, causing a ridiculous situation where we cannot honestly tell potential customers what the rate of return will be.
We are currently in a state of limbo with no resources left to fall back on, and no new business possible until the matter is settled.

All that you had to do was follow the correct procedure, and none of this damage would have occurred. Instead you chose deliberate sabotage, and are continuing with that policy despite your claims to the contrary.

I am utterly disgusted with you.

Greg Barker’s certainly right about the need for a bright future for solar. But this won’t happen if the Government sticks to its current plans which threaten to decimate the UK solar industry and pull the plug on tens of thousands of jobs.

We agree that solar tariff payments should be cut in line with falling costs, and called along with the solar industry for cuts to the tariff since last summer. But the speed of the introduction of the Government’s proposed cuts are completely unfair – and as demonstrated by our legal challenge alongside two solar firms (Solarcentury and HomeSun), they were also unlawful.

The Treasury-imposed budget cap is the key problem. Government must come up with more money - which happily can primarily be raised from the fast-expanding tax revenue this new industry generates.

The scheme must be more accessible to communities and people on low incomes. We agree loft and cavity wall insulation should be a requirement – but the Government’s consultation proposals are so tough it would cut the number of homes eligible for feed-in tariff payments by over 90 per cent.

Solar is exactly the sort of industry that the Government should be supporting. As well as employing tens of thousands of people it’s also key to building a low-carbon economy – and weening the nation off increasingly expensive fossil fuels and the power of the Big Six energy companies.

It's a hard time to be the green face of Government when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is finding every opportunity to play politics with the issue.

Greg Barker and other colleagues will find allies in the solar industry and green NGOs on this issue if he stands up to the Treasury and champions the changes outlined above.

Donna Hume
Energy Campaigner
Friends of the Earth

Greg Barker, you are a liar.
Your entire government are liars.

We could lead the world in this field. Your failure to embrace green technology is killing this country. What will we do when the fossil fuels run out and the biosphere is decimated, will you still be pandering to the bosses of corrupt energy companies and investment banks?

No. You will say you did what you could, that you tried your best...

In reality you are doing nothing, you are in a position of power yet you choose 'Business as usual' over direct action to avert catastophic climate change.

You do not deserve to live on this planet. Let alone your office.

Popular guy isn't he.

Nice to see he is listening to what the public wants too.

team0usa

9 January 2012 5:42PM

Popular guy isn't he.

There we were with a scaffold ready, and a rope hanging down, but no parts available.
Perhaps this would be a good time to invite the minister down for a little "consultation" I thought. >;>

Worthy of Yes Minister this and would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

EnviroCapitalist

9 January 2012 3:42PM
Response to laverda, 9 January 2012 1:39PM

Unfortunately solar is not such a panacea, as most demand for electricity is when the sun doesn't shine.

If 50% of households (~10 million) had a 5KW system, that's a capacity of 50GW. So on a sunny June day, we could turn off all fossil fuel plants. Any more solar would be wasted, without some break through in energy storage.

This 50GW of capacity will produce an average of about 5GW. And at 6pm in December, when electricity demand is greatest, this 50Gw of capacity will product 0 (zero).

Now if you look at California, Israel, etc, where peak demand is driven by air conditioning, then solar has a huge role to play.

Partially true, but there are classes of load which are ideal for solar PV.
Refrigeration for example is a good match for daytime/ summer.
Washing machines and storage heaters on timers.

Some of the images in the Guardian do tell an interesting tale though. Perhaps there really has been too much PV installed?

I mean, look at the picture above - so much PV, and, well, East Dulwich...well, so ahead of its time.
I would never have guessed that there could have been so much PV already installed in the late 60s/early 70s when this picture was clearly taken. Love those classic cars...

Similarly, a picture in the Jan 3rd article, "Solar subsidy confusion continues..." just feels wrong.
Ever feel victimised? Someone trying to ensure the whole PV thing looks out-of-control?

I'm no conspiracy theorist. Barker and DECC have traded PV for 'favours' from the big 6 energy suppliers. Run out of budget? Nonsense. £70 on a bill for consumers, my dog does better maths.

Massive competition over the last year has created a false market - competition was set to fall as installers realised in fact they were making no money, and went back to what they used to do. As this occurred, prices would have risen, to allow a proper margin to be taken, and the industry to grow at a reasonable rate. Panel prices hav dropped - but not before the installers cut their margin very very low. We now just have a very skewed market (over-supply, drastic under-demand), which will take some time to sort out.

Of course, the tariff should have been reduced to 21p over 3 years (not 6 weeks). If you deliberately encourage a market as the last government did, it is virtually criminal to make the changes carried out by Barker - and then just make the weak and unsubstantiated defence that has been made by the government.

Better, why not cut the 25 years FiT lifetime to 12.5 years? Same lifetime cost to the country as 21p, similar demand as key is to get system paid for ASAP.

Or, now to be honest, I think we will just settle for clarity, and the end to this embarrassing and very costly wait before we can start doing our best to promote PV again.

at the risk of bringing the debate down to the base level, Greg you are a disengenous idiot

A good and balanced CIF explaining the (sensible) rationale for this change.

One of the things that is puzzling about the anger of many commenting here is their sudden concern about making money.

When they accuse those they don't like of fixating on money, it's a criticism of their "enemies". But here they appear to be quite fixated on making money from solar power with very little comment on the environment here and in reply to other CIFs on this matter. Hypocrisy is the word that readily comes to mind.

I'm involved in a Community Energy coop that has put a lot of effort into revising it's plan to accommodate the cut in FIT to 16.8p for a 50 kWp PV system. We probably won't be ready to install until April but that's no surprise as April is less than 3 months away. So Greg wants some stability now in the industry so that we can make plans like these? So when will we know what the rate will be from April 1st and whether community schemes will be allowed to receive 100% rather than 80% of the FIT? the answer is no time soon, and as the Solar PV budget is apparantly 'blown' there is little hope of keeping even the current meagre rates. So how much energy should we be putting into projects that look increasing doomed? Have Greg Barker and Chris Huhne got the foggiest idea what the answers are? No, because decisions about budgets and the importance or not of renewables are clearly made well out of their sphere of influence or control by the energy lobby and their mates. So that makes them naive/incompetent/dishonest at best and at worst.....?

Partially true, but there are classes of load which are ideal for solar PV.
Refrigeration for example is a good match for daytime/ summer.
Washing machines and storage heaters on timers

Yes - washing machines and refrigeration are good examples. However, storage heating is the big one and there is no requirement for this in the summer (other than potentially inter-seasonal heat storage).

Germany will soon be at the point (I would estimate at about 40GW) where further solar power deployment is going to need some form of daily energy storage. With lots of that they (we in my present location) could perhaps go to 150 GW, with batteries fully charged at 5pm and empty at 9am. Beyond that, storage needs to be inter seasonal, and that will either need a miracle, or gas power to take over for the winter.

In case you weren't clear about the numbers there's a great website here for PV power estimation. For a fixed PV with the optimal slope and the optimal orientaion or azimuth in London you get 826kwh per year per installed kw with the default system losses. So, for your 50% of all homes in the UK 50gw of installed capacity sounds about right. So if all homes in the UK were in as sunny a location as London and were ideally orientated (exactly South) the most you could expect to get would be about 41 TWH per year - less than 10% of current UK electricity demand. Of course, most of the UK is North of London and most people's houses don't perfectly face south. If we assume the average azimuth is 30 degrees of South and the averaged UK location is birmigham we get about 780kwh for each installed kw producing less than 9.5% of UK electricity demand.

Translation of this article:

Damn we looked stupid when we lost that court case. Why cant those bloody greenies just accept it - we're going to let the solar industry go to the wall. So it will be in a few months time instead of in December - just face it and move on.

We Tories just can't bring ourselves to see a renewable technology thriving, even if it is only getting a fraction of the subsidies fossil fuels get. Now's not the time to save the planet, we're too busy getting filthy rich with our fat cat friends.

@EwanB, You are missing some obvious factors.

Firstly, solar efficiency is rising by perhaps 5-10% per year. In other words, the energy production per unit area is increasing per year. In other words, by 2020, your potential installation on UK residential rooftops (on your figures) could be 75-100GW. That efficiency trend is set to continue since the thereotecially possible efficiencies are 500% higher than the current ones, with 50-100% improvements already looking likely over this decade.

Secondly, it is not just residential rooftops that can benefit from solar, there are a multitude of other options. For example car parks, barn roofs or commercial roofs, among others. You will find that you might dramatically increase your capacity by including these spaces too. Of course, any space that you can work beneath, even grazing fields, can include solar on a very large scale which is also the most economical way. The isle of wight has a project where the solar panels are elevated allowing sheep to graze underneath. You can also optimize these systems further through altering their orientation during the day and throughout the year.

Lastly, the technology for linking the panels together is increasing and there is currently a 10-25% gap between the type of technology that you will likely receive in the UK and the latest methods (micro-inverters, DC optimizers).

The simple fact is yes, using just UK rooftops will not give us 100% electricity from solar, no-one is saying that right now it will. That is not to say it won't be possible in the future, just not yet.

So, we are left with a relatively easy starting point of 10% (your figures) which would be a very healthy contribution both clean and (will be) cheap. Put another way, if it is ultimately going to be the cheapest form of energy production, it should be top of our list to support. No other energy source has the kind of potential cost reduction future as PV. And do not think that fossil fuels or nuclear are cheap, they are not when the indirect costs are factored in such as subsidies, food, health and war for fossil fuels and insurance, accident risk, weapons and waste storage for nuclear.

The idea that we should not support solar is one only put forward by the conservatives. The public and the other parties fully support solar for all the reasons discussed here.

solar subsidie to supportive needs cutting back , funny that,

I wonder how he feels about the massive subsidies that consumers pay towards fossil fuels that for outway solar yes that wright nobady talks about that because they are to cosy together fossil fuel gremlins surely dont need our money they make billions in profits every year

simple solution that would help millions ecpesially the poor , end subsidies to fossil fuel industrys coal, oil, gas thats tax breaks as well oh and dont kill off solar

NeverMindTheBollocks

9 January 2012 7:31PM

A good and balanced CIF explaining the (sensible) rationale for this change.

One of the things that is puzzling about the anger of many commenting here is their sudden concern about making money.

When they accuse those they don't like of fixating on money, it's a criticism of their "enemies". But here they appear to be quite fixated on making money from solar power with very little comment on the environment here and in reply to other CIFs on this matter. Hypocrisy is the word that readily comes to mind.

There is a whole world of difference between making money for its own sake, gambling on the stock exchange or awarding yourself a huge bonus, and wanting to be able to earn a modest living doing something genuinely useful.
It is the manner of the change, the ludicrous and destructive short notice and ensuing uncertainty which grates. The government are entitled to make such changes, but there are proper procedures to do so which have been bypassed.

Unfortunately the solar PV argument has become polarised around domestic scale installations.
A 21 pence per kWh subsidy is actually too high for the 0 - 4kW band as it will allow installation firms to offer returns on investment of around 10% for the best sited systems.
By contrast, the economies of scale that can be achieved with large solar parks are not sufficient to achieve a 10% return with an 8.5 pence per kWh subsidy.
While I would argue that both ends of the size spectrum need to function, the real reason for the Government's attempt to pretend that FITS was all about solar panels on houses and nowhere else is fierce anti FITS lobbying from the Big 6 energy suppliers.
They are rightly fearful of widespread adoption of solar PV because it directly reduces their customer's energy bills and hence their turnover and profits.
The arbitrary cap that Osborne has imposed on the amount of FITS expenditure is designed solely to give the Government a vestige of an excuse to do their paymaster's bidding - and hobble the UK solar PV industry.
Unfortunately there is no proper investigative journalism left in the UK so the corruption of the behind the scenes lobbying that is being carried out by EDF, EOn, Centrica and the others is allowed to proceed without scrutiny.

Barker will undoubtedly end up after his (hopefully) short political career as a non-executive director of a power utility company, who will be happy to reward him for his duplicity on their behalf.

From his website

Greg graduated in History, Economic History & Politics from London University in 1987 and has over ten years experience of working in the City of London. In 1988 after working at the Centre for Policy Studies with David Willetts, Greg trained as smaller companies analyst and subsequently became a Corporate Finance Director of the Australian owned International Pacific Securities, specializing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions.

In 1997 Greg became an Associate Partner of the leading financial public relations firm, Brunswick Group Ltd. The following year he was appointed head of International Investor Relations for Sibneft, a major Russian oil company, where he helped lead the company’s drive to modernize in the post Soviet economy and open up to Western markets. He returned to Britain in May 2000, to continue as a director of Bartlett Scott Edgar, the recruitment advertising business, of which he helped lead a “management buy-in” in 1998. The company was sold to TMP Worldwide in 2001.

Or, to be more concise: Greg is exceedingly well connected with the fossil fuel sector and couldn't care less about solar.

Like most people who argue against solar PV, EwanB, you miss the point. Deliberately perhaps but whatever.
Solar PV FITS support was not intended to be restricted to houses, and while useful in giving domestic consumers a degree of energy autonomy, you need to look at the far more efficient and larger scale locations both on large commercial and industrial building roofs as well as ground mounted solar parks, where the cost per unit generated can be considerably reduced and which are not far off grid parity.
If you were to build solar parks on brownfield sites too contaminated or unstable for conventional redevelopment for example then there are hundreds of thousands of acres available in the UK as a whole.
Since these installations can achieve optimum fixed array orientation and inclination, average output will be more typically in the 900 - 950 kWh per kW annual yield levels.
If you also require these generators to supply their electricity directly to large industrial or commercial energy users such as factories, dairies, business parks, hospitals, universities and the like then you also displace large amounts of brown energy and reduce CO2 emissions as a consequence.

The benefit to the economy of renewable energy that is hardly ever mentioned of course is that this displaced brown energy then requires less imported gas, coal or oil to generate with a consequent positive impact on the balance of payments.

Such is the power of vested energy supply interests in this country of course that the political party which represents them, the Tories, will do their utmost to stop renewable energy of the type that delivers energy autonomy gaining ground.

The public actually get solar PV - it is the politicians in the present Government that are the major obstacle.

I for one enjoy the 43p return for every kw I generate on my 3.51kw system (see me results here) and it certainly helps give my parents a better return on their investment than a bank. Having said that reducing the return to more like 21p per kw would make the industry more more sustainable and hopefully push some of the less reutable get quick rich suppliers out of the market.

Once again TheHuMan makes a fantastic post.
I am really impressed with your ability to make such an intelligent and enlightened counter argument.
I wish you were the minister for climate change.

Don't worry my friend the cat is out the bag and there is no putting it back.

The price of panels will continue to fall, efficiencies will continue to increase and soon a tipping point will be reached. A paradigm shift in energy generation will occur.

The nasty fossil fuel companies know their days are numbered, hence the greedy price hikes.

I believe that a twin axis tracking system can increase the overall output of a panel by 30-40% per annum.

Solar is here to stay.