Pressure grows on DECC after shock cut in Feed in Tariff

Pressure has been growing on the Department of Energy and Climate Change after the announcement on Monday 4th November that Feed in Tariff will be slashed by over 50% from December 12th. Many companies in the solar industry such as HiS Group fear this will lead to wide scale job losses and cause the industry to grind to a halt.

Many journalists have reported an estimated loss of 25,000+ jobs resulting from the Government’s cut in the Feed in Tariff. However, there are now more serious questions being asked regarding the legality of what the Government have done. By announcing a cut which comes into effect before the end of the consultation period, the Government is breaking several commitments it has made to legislation. Further, any deviation from the UK’s carbon reduction roadmap must be discussed with the EU prior to implementation. No one from DECC has consulted with the EU on the massive reduction in the UK Feed in Tariff and it is believed that this announcement will cause a significant impact on the UK’s carbon reduction plans as few other renewable technologies have seen wide scale uptake in the way that Solar PV has.

The EU recently delayed the implementation of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) due to concerns over the tariff rate set for the Biomass technologies. This caused the commercial Renewable Heat Incentive to be delayed by 2 months. If the EU were to step in, the Feed in Tariff may be extended which would allow customers, installers and manufacturers to clear their order books and revise their strategy to compete in the market at a greatly reduced level. HiS Group are in favour of a large cut to the Feed in Tariff, however, the space of change is very difficult for any industry to cope with, let alone a fledgling industry such as the Solar PV industry.