Energy and Industrial Strategy

The government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy surveyed householders and small businesses and was told the prospect of firms having to pay higher taxes after installing PV prompted fury – just as the national solar trade body has been telling Whitehall for years.

Trade organization Solar Energy UK has called for the government to mandate that solar target in a co-ordinated rallying cry issued with two peers. One of them, the Nuclear Industry Association, is a membership body sure to raise hackles in some quarters of the energy transition movement.

The success of unsubsidized clean power facilities in the country – whether driven by corporate power purchase agreements or selling direct to the wholesale electricity market – has prompted the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ponder whether contracts-for-difference payments will be fit for purpose in the years ahead.

Developers dodged more onerous supply-chain and carbon-footprint commitments in the results of a recent consultation exercise announced by BEIS but appear set to lose all Contracts for Difference top-up payments during periods of negative electricity prices.

The government has commissioned a study into the feasibility of generating solar power in space and beaming the energy down to earth now that commercial space launches have changed the rules of the game.

Analyst Cornwall Insight said the figure, drawn from its Renewable Pipeline tracker, related only to the proportion of the nation’s 13 GW solar pipeline which had already applied for or secured planning permission.

The announcement by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of an auction which will include solar next year appears to back prime minister Boris Johnson’s claims to be serious about the nation’s net-zero carbon ambition.

The governmental body responsible for keeping mine pollution out of waterways has announced completion of the first phase of a plan to use solar to keep down its electricity bills.

The future benefits of technology such as smart meters and the associated aggregation of small scale generation are not being adequately rewarded, support for solar and wind is being cut off and parliament is fixated solely on one issue.

The managing director of London-based energy infrastructure company Statera has told pv magazine a clean energy grid in the U.K. will require as much flexible gas plant capacity as battery storage.