Industry Awaits Announcement

The UK solar industry awaits the announcement of The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on decisions reached through a consultation process that is still currently within the courts. Yesterday Greg Barker confirmed there will be planned and progressive cuts for the industry but gave no indication of the time lines and scales as that will be part of today's announcement. Barker also revealed that DECC had found funds tipped for Renewables Obligation incentive scheme and had increased the FiT fund to 1 billion pounds. There was no disclosure on whether this was to make up for the excess related to the original plans or whether the additive was a result of the on going court issues. Barker told a group of industry representatives that the increased budget show that solar was being taken seriously for the first time by DECC. 

Barker later took to social network sites to announce that his personal vision was a UK industry of a longer term goals of 22GW by 2020. The mood of attendees was positive in the vision but fearful of the path that the government plans to tread to the goal. The uncertainty and indecision remains and it will take more than today's announcements for trust to return for many sectors of the industry.

The announcements today are expected to include a planned reduction of tariffs for the FiT scheme and many will looking at the fine details to ascertain dates of change. Calculators will then fly over the new figures as companies determine profitability based on the proposals. Then they will decide how to respond. The discussions showed little acknowledgement of solar as part of a broader renewable energy plan for the country or how future targets would be affected by other renewable energies. The meeting also had discussions looking at the German scheme to see what benefits could be applied to the UK. Although some interesting discussions took place it appeared that these were the sort of processes the industry was hoping the government would do before the FiT scheme was developed and subsequently retrospectively changed creating uncertainty and mistrust that has not been resolved.

Barker warned that the industry will take a sharp breath at the new proposals but some have been holding their breath so long they may be only able to utter a sigh.