This is my last word on solar issues – for a bit!
One hundred and fifty businesses have joined forces to deliver a letter to David Cameron today – simply to urge him to support the UK solar industry. And there’s an incredibly powerful message wrapped up in that: if they get the support right now, it will make it possible for the whole industry to go “subsidy-free” within the next few years.
The letter will be delivered by Jeremy Leggett, who’s extraordinary success in promoting solar in Africa I covered in my blog on Saturday (5/7). Here’s what he will be saying today:
“Despite all the incredible achievements in the UK solar industry since 2010, it’s still very clear that the Whitehall mindset has yet to catch up.
Too much of the wording in the current solar consultation has the whiff of Groundhog Day about it. It’s time the Government woke up to the fact that, with stable support, jobs-rich UK solar will be cheaper than onshore wind during the next Parliament, opening up immense opportunities for UK plc, and driving down the costs of delivering the 2020 Renewable Energy Target in the process.
Far from slamming the brakes on large-scale solar, the Prime Minister should be hailing it as one of Great Britain’s renewable energy success stories, and getting behind it. Instead, he prefers to push fracking, even in National Parks.”
Difficult to disagree with a single word of that!