An emergency plan has been proposed by the solar power industry to save renewables. They claim it would only add an additional £1 on to consumer bills by 2019, this is on top of the £9 a year bill tax payers are charged for clean technology subsidies.
The Solar Trade Association (STA) plan would entail initial higher tariffs for subsidies in order to make investing in new technology viable, followed by reductions to allow the Government to control costs and give the industry certainty. It aims to ensure that families, farmers, housing associations and community groups could continue to be involved in the move towards low-carbon power. Furthermore its plans hope to allow the solar power industry to become subsidy-free, as well as preserving up to 20,000 jobs and increase the amount of homes which are solar powered.
These proposals came in response to Government plans to cut available subsidies for rooftop solar panel installations from 1 January. The proposed cuts have raised concerns that up to 27,000 jobs could be lost and public money already spent on supporting the technology could be wasted. It has been estimated that 1,000 jobs have already been lost to date within solar companies who are already feeling the effects of the changes.
The Government have defended solar subsidy cuts by saying they want to relieve costs that are passed on to the public. A Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) spokesman said:
''Our priority is to keep bills as low as possible for hard-working families and businesses, while reducing our emissions in the most cost-effective way. Government subsidies have driven down the cost of renewable technologies significantly and we delivered much higher deployment and more than the promised subsidies to the industry.''
The Government's initial objective was to reduce a £1.5 billion overspend in the amount of subsidies paid to the renewable energy sector by 2020, but indicated more would need to be done to reduce costs. It said the overrun in costs had been caused by low power prices and larger than anticipated investment in solar and other renewable projects.
