Fury at plans to scrap UK renewables subsidies

They say all good things come to an end, and in this case the rug is being pulled away from support for various types of renewable project including small-scale solar systems, as PEI reports. Cue the usual wailing about the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, as ever falsely described as ‘carbon emissions’. Coincidentally perhaps, the closure date coincides with the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Renewables and sustainability groups have reacted with fury to proposals by the UK government to scrap subsidies for green energy projects.

The feed-in tariffs scheme is the government’s subsidy scheme for small-scale low-carbon installations.

A consultation paper published yesterday sets out a proposal to close the export tariff alongside the generation tariff on 31 March 2019.

The move comes after government advisors in recent weeks called for a greater drive in wind and solar projects to combat climate change. The proposal to scrap subsidies was also published on the same day the government revealed its National Adaptation Programme 2018 to 2023, which sets out a strategy to deal with the effects of climate change.

Environment Minister Lord Gardiner said yesterday that climate change “is one of the most serious environmental challenges that we face as a nation”.

But Doug Parr, Greenpeace Chief Scientist, today said the subsidy-scrapping proposal leaves the UK’s “reputation for leadership on tackling climate change in tatters”.

“It’s absolutely shocking that, just weeks after the government’s main advisers on infrastructure and tackling climate change strongly recommended that the government back wind and solar because they are the cheapest and cleanest forms of power, the government is hanging these industries out to dry.

“The government is not planning on financially or politically supporting them at all. Jobs will go, skills will be lost, investment will dry up, and opportunities will be squandered.”

Gareth Redmond-King, head of climate and energy at WWF said the UK government “is seesawing between its ambition to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement and this announcement ending subsidies for small scale renewables”.

“This move will prevent people – particularly low-income families – from accessing the benefits of onsite clean, free power. To begin restoring nature we urgently need to ramp up investment in renewables instead, in order to limit our carbon emissions.”

James Court, head of policy and external affairs at the UK Renewable Energy Association, said the removal of the export tariff for new projects “will lead to the truly bizarre situation where consumers who own technologies such as solar will give electricity they don’t consume to the grid for free”.

Continued here.