Moving the goalposts - again!

At the beginning of this week DECC published its timetable for implementing the RHI or Renewable Heat Incentive.  It's a great incentive because it works in the same way as Feed-in Tariffs and ROCS - it pays you to produce, and hopefully use, renewable heat.

And yet, in the same ways as they dramatically changed Feed-in Tariffs at short notice, the Government have now announced a delay of the second phase of RHI till 2013.  The disappointment within the renewables industry is palpable.  The Solar Trade Association, ABDA (the anaerobic digestion industry body) and the Renewables Energy Association have called the changes "premature", "unhelpful" and a "source of huge frustration".

The sting in the tail, however, is the small part of the announcement that stated the Government is proposing a policy of "cost control".  In other ways, it is keeping the door open to do what it did with FITs, dropping the level of incentive at short notice.

While the talk this week has been about panic buying petrol, pies and postage stamps, the serious issue is the lack of growth in the economy.  There is little plan for growth and absolutely no plan for sustainable growth.  This change, once again, to existing schemes continues to undermine the fledgling green industries that should be at the centre of our economic strategy.  People will not invest when the future is so uncertain.  A depressing time for all of us working in this area.

Podcast: The Co-op Approach to Solar

Copyright Ben Whittle 2012 Leominster's Solar PV

This podcast discusses what you need to do to get a community-owned solar PV project up and running.  Ben Whittle and Philippa Roberts talk about the issues faced in Leominster, Herefordshire.


Start: How Ben became involved
3min: Why a solar co-op?
6min: Who else is involved and why?
9min: How to set up a solar co-op
13min: Changes to the Feed in Tariff (FIT)
18min: Getting PV on the roof and the support from Good Energy
20 min: The future of community renewables.

Can Community Solar Survive?

Copyright Ben Whittle 2012

I recently interviewed Ben Whittle, a founding Director of the Leominster Community Solar Co-op.  This Herefordshire based community project aimed to put a large solar PV array on the local sports centre; owned and funded by people who lived in the area.  Unfortunately, the launch event happened a matter of days before the Government's first 'review' of the Feed-in tariff.

While the solar industry has seen strong growth in recent years, and should be considered a success story, it is under threat from a lack of faith in the investment environment.  Regular and unexpected changes to any subsidiary will always cause uncertainty, and make it harder for projects to get off the ground.  I personally know projects that were cancelled as a result.



So did the Leominster project make it?  Listen to the interview and find out!

Can Technology Save Us?

Interesting article from the TED Conference showing the contrasting views of Paul Guilding and Peter Diamandis.  While Paul argues that our obsession with economic growth is overloading the planet's capacity to support us, Peter believes that technology will save us.

It's an argument that has been going on for some time, and one I've written about before in an earlier blog.  It's hard to defend growth when you hear about the environmental limits, but harder still to not defend it in this time of austerity.

I think the conversation would be more fruitful if we were trying to figure out what sustainable 'growth' could look like.  It's probably true that we are measuring the wrong things, but GDP is going to be the indicator of choice for some time yet.  So while that is the case, now is the time to be looking at the new business models that will change the world.  There are ways to improve living standards that don't involve consuming more.  There are collaborative businesses that do this, whatever there legal status.  I'm tracking some of these down to find out how and why they do what they do, and will be writing about them here.  If you know of any, or you are one, please get in touch. I'll bring the biscuits when I come and visit.