‘There was a revealing moment on Tuesday’s Today programme when the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Amber Rudd, was petulantly interviewed about her proposed cuts to the nearly £1 billion-a-year subsidy given to our solar energy industry.
Her action follows a recent government report which showed that the cost of “environmental levies” has been exploding out of control, and is now projected within five years to have almost trebled to £9.1 billion a year.
Putting the case for the industry, Justin Webb began by claiming that, on July 3, no less than “16 per cent of electricity demand in the UK was met by solar power”. Which sounded impressive.
What he didn’t explain, however, was that this 16 per cent was for only a short time in the afternoon when demand was low; and that spikes like this create big problems for the grid, which has to shut off power from other sources to accommodate that briefly coming from solar.’
