More than 20,000 jobs could be lost from the U.K.s solar industry following the introduction next year of the proposed new feed-in tariff (FIT) rates, according to a study commissioned by the very same government department responsible for the cuts.
The findings of the Department of Energy and Climate Changes (DECC) study commissioned last year revealed that every MW of solar power installed on domestic rooftops supported 20 jobs in the U.K. solar industry.
However, environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth have said that the reduced FIT rates which represent an 87% cut for residential systems below 4 kW (falling from 12.47p per kilowatt hour to just 1.63p/kWh on January 1, 2016) will mean a shortfall of 1.1 GW of new solar PV capacity each year to 2021.
This adds up to 22,000 jobs lost or not created, which serves to underline DECCs previous claim that the solar industry has been able to support jobs and economic growth over the past few years a period that included a recession.
"The governments idealogically driven war on solar threatens tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses across the U.K.," said Friends of the Earth campaigner Alaisdair Cameron. "Renewable energy has been one of the U.K.s few economic bright spots.
"Pulling the plug on an industry that could shortly provide Britain with one of its cheapest and cleanest forms of energy is massive wasted investment."
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.