Date published: 2007/05/10
The BBC says:
The government's decision to reduce individual grants for homeowners wanting to produce their own renewable energy has been criticised.
Changes to the Low Carbon Buildings Programme mean that future applicants will be limited to £2,500 for domestic micro-generation projects.
Previously, grants of up to £15,000 and £5,000 were available for solar energy and micro-turbine schemes respectively.
Ministers said the changes would enable more people to participate.
Demand for the scheme, introduced last year, has been intense with monthly allocations of money being fully subscribed within minutes.
...
"There is no justification for the decision in terms of strategy or support for domestic renewable electricity market," said Seb Berry, external affairs director of Solar Century, which designs and installs solar panels.With the typical cost of buying and installing a solar panel system about £7,000, Mr Berry said the changes would make the project unviable for many people.
"You are asking individual homeowners to find £4,000 to £5,000 of their own money."
Well you would hope that homeowners would have to pay a fairly substantial fraction of the cost of buying and installing solar panels. What do these people think, that the rest of the country should subsidise their lifestyle? Sure, you might want to claim that solar power (no matter how inappropriate it is for the UK) should be given some kind of kickstart. But the government should not pour large amounts of money into the scheme (which also happens to mainly benefit the middle class). If you receive a subsidy for something, anything, then you have successfully externalised costs onto everybody else. And if there is one thing that the world has got to learn to stop doing, it is externalising costs. Instead of subsidising these "low" carbon power sources, they should instead just put a carbon tax on all sources of carbon emissions. That creates a level enough playing field.
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