Government launched a barrage of documents at us yesterday. I was mostly watching out for the Renewable Strategy but that was only a small part of it. Here’s the reading roundup:
- UK Low Carbon Transition Plan – this is the overarching doc. It’s basically the roadmap to meeting the legally binding carbon budgets from now to 2050 with some good stuff on how it will be done. But puts a hell of a lot of faith in nuclear, building new coal (with mythical magical CCS), and the efficacy of the EU ETS. 7m homes to get refurbed under Pay as You Save (more on this later). Cars to emit less carbon.
- Consultation on Renewable and Small Scale Low Carbon Electricity Financial Incentives – the consultation on the RO and the Feed in Tariff. They appear to have watered down the FiT saying 5% return is enough to attract investment. We’ve got to stop the government from nickel and diming its way into grand sounding but useless gestures.
- Renewable Energy Strategy – Following the draft version in 2008, this doc lays out the map for the UK to meet 15% of its total energy requirements from renewables by 2020 (this in an EU requirement as opposed to the other targets with are internal). A good thing: renewables claiming FiT’s are also likely to count towards Zero Carbon standard.
- Low Carbon Industrial Strategy – much of the above recycled but in the context of UK business. How jobs will be created and the costs of transitioning to a low carbon economy will be minimised. It might have been the picture of Peter Mandelson in the intro, but I struggled to maintain any enthusiasm reading this one. Tidal power to get £60m. Nuclear to get a £15m research centre (let the subsidies begin!), the SW of England to become a pilot low carbon economic area.
I’d be interested in your thoughts on what impact the proposed levels of FiT’s will make to the financial viability of retrofitting renewable energy to non-domestic buildings, particularly PV at the 50-100kW scale.
Hi William. Are you really writing from Antarctica? Please say you are.
I think the FiT for PV at all scales has been set pathetically low, especially in relation to medium scale wind which was already doing well under the ROC regime. Lord Hunt is making noise about how with the guaranteed export price and the offset use of electricity, this almost gets us in the neighbourhood of the highly successful German FiT. But I’m afraid he is guilty of some very creative accounting.
We’re looking closely at PV under the FiT regime as part of another project and I hope to post more extensively on it here. In the meantime, take a look at the Poyry analysis (pdf) which supported the recent consultation doc. Looks like they think it should be higher as well.
My hope is that there will be enough of us making noise about this in the FiT consultation that PV will be brought up to the same levels of support as other renewable technologies.