Solar PV – Get in quick!

Just last week The Department for Energy and Climate Change published their consultancy providing proposed changes to the Feed in Tariff for Solar PV.

We always knew that solar PV would have to stand on its own two feet and agreed with the British Photo-voltaic Association that this should happen by 2020. With a full Conservative Government in place minus the support given to renewables from the LibDems we knew that this reduction would come sooner and, in all likelihood, in the next two years.

We begun to put in measures to protect our business and offer more options for customers preparing for a subsidy-less product come perhaps 2018/19. We are still rather shocked to see that this will happen now in just 4 MONTHS!

As a result of this the key industry players are in uproar and there is a threat to the estimated 30,000 jobs that Solar PV has created. Our Sales and Marketing Director Mark Blunden put together this speech and following question which was proposed at a local business briefing by The Rt HON. Oliver Letwin MP on Friday 4th September.

The RT. Hon Oliver Letwin MP

‘At Futurum the core of our business is renewable energy but anyone who knows us will concur we aren’t in the tree hugger end of the market.

We have always aimed to provide consumers and businesses with a high quality solution to their energy problems offering new technologies that are both economically and environmentally suitable.

We don’t expect our clients to change their ways overnight and we promote behaviour change as an essential part of this process which again saves them money via reduced energy use and if you are not a climate change sceptic, it helps save the planet too.

In a ideal world we would love every one of you to have the car and home that your heart desires and all the consumer goods that you want for your yourself.

It would though be foolish to do this, for the one main reason that the planets resources are ultimately finite.

We have one planet last time I looked, even though the human race is doing its best to ruin this one and find another habitable one for us when it does.

Our renewables industry is still relatively young and we have been grateful to the government for the subsidies in place to help get our developing technologies off the ground but DECC announced last week that the government will effectively kill off the subsidy for solar PV with a rate drop of 87%. This will take the rate from just under 13 pence a kilowatt hour to just over a penny from January next year, just 4 months away.

At the height of the PV boom that the subsidy started, there were 4600 approved installers of solar. That has dropped to about a half in the last year and I predict it will drop to just a handful by this time next year if these proposed cuts go ahead.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that the solar industry should stand on its own two feet by 2020 and we would like that to happen. The industry has worked hard In recent years to reduce solar production cost from $100 a watt to just $1 a watt.’

Getting to zero subsidy would also reduce the absurd amount of paperwork that any subsidy claim in our industry creates for our already over stretched admin team whether it is for solar, biomass or electric vehicle charge points.

I put it therefore to Mr Letwin that successive governments ‘start stop’ policy is just not sustainable or viable for businesses struggling to grow.

We feel this huge and short notice cut will kick the legs out from an industry that just learned to walk unlike the clearly more mature fossil fuel industry which still gets £26bn annually accounting for around 1.37% of GDP.

Sales and Marketing Director – Mark Blunden

Can Mr Letwin assure us and our industry that small, medium and large scale renewables will not be dropped like a stone causing thousands of lost jobs and potential financial ruin for those that have risked their own finances and livelihood to help the government meet UK, EU and global climate change targets?’

Mr Letwin noted that solar could now stand on its own two feet and the industry would grow without the subsidy.

We agree that the industry will survive but believe many jobs and opportunities will be lost in the interim and that growth would be now at best minimal following the sudden cut from 1st January 2016.

If you are considering installing solar PV then we urge you to do so before the end of 2015 whist these subsidies remain in place. Call us on 01609 775500.