Included in its electoral demands issued today, trade body SolarEnergyUK says a new administration should establish and share its roadmap for solar generation within 100 days of taking office.

Britain needs in short a government that fully embraces solar “so we can reap the benefits for our economy, people and environment”, in the words of chief  executive Chris Hewett, pictured.

Rescued from limbo, the body believes, must be 15 months of detailed output from an industry-government Solar Taskforce, convened in spring 2023.  With an initial brief to speed more arrays on commercial roofs, the taskforce’s remit quickly expanded to cover detailed work in areas such as developing solar’s UK supply chain & better trade skills.

Confusion was thrown on the Taskforce’s work first by the resignation of energy minister Graham Stuart in April, then by Sunak’s surprise election call last month.

As next year dawns,  the UK will have about 20GW of solar generation capacity in place, supplemented by 8GW of big batteries.  By 2030, Britain needs 50GW of solar , plus 30GW of zero-carbon energy storage, the lobbying group believes.

Those numbers are in line both with the Sunak administration’s target of 70GW of generating PV arrays  by 2035 and the National Infrastructure Commission’s recommendation of 60GW of short-term flex by 2035.

According to SolarEnergyUK’s manifesto, steps to deliver them must include ;

Embracing UK solar

Private investors including from overseas are willing to fund  UK solar and storage at all scales, the group believes. But deterrents persist, which only government leadership can remove.

Resolving Britain’s inconsistent planning regime is among them, as is joined-up thinking on too-fragmented current relationships between energy security, food security and restoring nature.

“We do not have to choose one over the other,” says the manifesto.

Consistency in planning decisions is also key.   Officials Failing to respect established national policy has led to more refusals for solar being overturned more than any other kind of development, wasting private and public money, and needlessly extending the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Rooftop solar power is hugely popular, the PV advocates claim. Over 1.5m small  solar installations sit on homes, businesses and community buildings, almost half of them installed after the end of subsidies in 2019.

But poor households, and community activists investing in solar on local public buildings & schools look to be missing out at present, says SEUK.

Building standards need urgent overhaul, and peer-to-peer energy trading must be enabled to allow schools, community projects and businesses to buy and sell power locally.

Congested distribution & transmission networks mean solar farms are built quickly but languish for far longer as they wait for a grid connection. The effect is to delay ground-mounted and roof-mounted commercial arrays, as well as grid-facing batteries.  Without radical improvements, Net Zero by 2035 could be in danger, the blueprint warns.

Ofgem must solving this problem by improving service from grid operators, including by compelling them to release data on local usage and upgrades.

The skills needed for British green jobs is another topic requiring immediate attention by  D-ESNZ chiefs.

Renewables is the engine for a decade-long jobs boom.   But the route to a just transition which retrains workers mid-career or brings on school-leavers is not as clear as it should be

Incoming ministers should work with solar practitioners, says SEUK,  setting up with a chain of regional training centres to promote career opportunities.

While it’s probably not economic to make solar arrays in Britain, SolarEnergyUK says there’s a case for Whitehall to foster manufacturing of switchgear, cabling, batteries and mounting systems.

On inward investment, the manifesto warns Britain must not fall in attractiveness behind the EU, US, China, India and other emerging supplier nations. Ensuring that solar and energy storage has a level playing field with other energy technologies overseas is essential, says the document.

Effective incentives must exist to spur new solar installation at utility scale, it goes on. Over 11GW of solar capacity is approved and awaiting construction. But the Allocation Round 6 of the Contracts for Difference reverse auctions will see less than 2GW of that total built, putting targets at risk.

The next government should also ensure that the Electricity Generator Levy, the Capacity Market, Balancing Mechanisms and the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) attracts investment in clean energy, with storage and flexibility to provide backup.

Read SolarEnergyUK’s manifesto here.

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Industrial roofs and public buildings such as schools will gain most.  Systems of up to 1MWp – very broadly between 300 and 350 panels – will no longer be required to endure delays of up to eight weeks – or so ministers estimate –,  while town hall planners ponder projects.

Flat surfaces above homes no longer need approval either, bringing them in line with commercial roofs.  Curbs in conservation areas, which typically make it hard to erect systems visible from ground level, remain in force however.

Yesterday’s move by the Department of Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities extends the scope of what planners refer to as permitted development.

It will ease the work of a joint industry-government solar task force, aiming to persuade indifferent or conservative landlords of shopping malls, factories, car parks and logistics depots to embrace PV, enabling tenants to slash electricity bills.

From its outset the group saw planning rules as a major barrier to productive use of largely unseen, unlovely, otherwise wasted surfaces.  Remaining obstacles include big installations’ waits for grid connections and shortages of technically qualified staff in electrical trades.

Announced in May, the taskforce is currently scheduled to cease work when it reports in February.  Though the body’s working groups  are dominated by supply-side participants such as installers, developers and kit importers, SolarEnergy UK is believed to have approached the UK Warehousing Association, RICS the landlords’ advisory body and the Local Government Association.

It was set up to speed up the government’s goal of 70GW of solar on UK roofs by 2035, stepping up by five times current PV deployments.

Trade advocates Solar Energy UK welcomed the improvement. Their chief executive Chris Hewett said:

“The potential of installing solar power on large commercial rooftops is vast, estimated at 15 gigawatts across the country”.

“Eliminating one of the stumbling blocks on the way to fulfilling that opportunity is extremely welcome, helping to make British businesses more competitive by slashing energy bills, bolstering the economy and pushing us further towards Net Zero.”

Property developers and house builders provided at least ten per cent of all donations to the Conservative Party since 2010, the Guardian reported in October, using figures compiled from public records. The same source estimated property owners had benefitted by at least £15 billion since 2015 by building homes to old, high carbon standards, without PV panels or batteries, heat pumps and effective insulation.

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Roofs of commercial buildings, offices, distribution hubs & and their surrounding acres of asphalt-covered ground offer vast untapped potential to generate cheap, on-site power from light, as the nation seeks to add to the 1.1 million domestic roofs already benefitting from solar kit.

Jointly led by energy minister Graham Stuart and suppliers’ trade body SolarEnergyUK, the taskforce met for the first time today, in a bid to overcome barriers slowing the spread onto commercial roofs of the quickly deployed, low-cost technology

Absent however from today’s meeting were major property owners and their advisors. A SolarEnergyUK spokesperson promised these would be invited to the taskforce’s working groups, before it ceases operation in February.

LandSec ranks among the UK’s three biggest commercial property owners, by revenue. Its latest sustainability performance figures report – table 16 – that across its retail sites, self-generation from renewables accounted for only 2% of the total 53 million kWh consumed across LandSec-owned shops & supermarkets in 2022.  Barely changed for 3 years, onsite self-generation across LandSec’s retail estate has hovered just above 1 million kWh.

By 2035, ministers intend multiplying Britain’s existing solar capacity nearly five-fold, to 70GW, up from the current estimate of around 15GW. All but 1 per cent of Britain’s solar arrays have been installed since 2010, during the eight years of the Feed-in Tariff subsidy, closed since March 2019 to new registrations.

Low-quality farmland houses the overwhelming share of solar capacity, raising objections from some country-dwellers and the Conservative Right. Now industry backers want to speed and spread array installation to uglier industrial roofs and grey ground asphalt, all easily addressed and far less politically sensitive.

The taskforce emerges from a commitment in Powering Up Britain, the government blueprint released in April outlining the UK’s route to a clean, secure electricity system by 2035.  The paper accepted recommendations for more urgency made in January by Chris Skidmore MP, in his independent review of Britain’s Net Zero goals.

Co-chairing today’s first meeting, energy security minister Stuart declared: “Households across the UK are already doing their bit to provide cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy sources with solar on their roofs.

“With acres of rooftop space on car parks and supermarkets in every community, we can be doing even more.

“This new dedicated taskforce will have a laser-like focus on cutting costs and breaking down the barriers to harnessing the power of the sun in every way we can, all while using a small fraction of this country’s land”.

His taskforce co-chair, Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK pictured right, said: “Installing rooftop solar, whether residential or commercial, is one of the best investments available, greatly enhanced by adding battery storage”.

This March alone, say industry observers, over 19,000 sites received new solar installations, a rate of more than 500 a day.  At this rate, 2023 will see 230,000 new PV systems put in place, beating a record set in 2011, the first year of public subsidy.

“Rates of rooftop installation must double to help hit 70GW by 2035”, Hewett went on, and “the number of solar farms will also have to increase significantly”.

The new solar taskforce counts as members the heads or senior officers of:

• Investors NextEnergy Capita and the UK Infrastructure Bank

• Solar developers Evo Energy, EDF, Lightsource BP and equipment distributor Segen
• The Energy Networks Association

Polls repeatedly confirm solar as the most popular form of power generation among Britain’s public.  After last decade’s cycles of boom and bust, the subsidy-free industry now supports an estimated 11,500 high quality jobs.

Three years of eye-watering electricity tariffs for commercial tenants aid the task-force’s efforts to educate roof owners.

More details on the taskforce here.

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