The only significant new step announced by the energy security secretary today, according to the lobbyists, concerns perceptions of accuracy in ranking the soil quality on agricultural land housing new racks of panels.

The government intends to strengthen such perceptions by means of more independent certification in land assessments sent by developers to planning authorities.  This measure is intended to help avoid disputes over which areas are subject to planning guidelines on higher quality agricultural land.

“Both Coutinho and the Prime Minister’s broader comments on food security appear to be directed at a small minority of anti-solar Conservative backbenchers, rather than decision-makers in local councils”, said Solar Energy UK in a statement released this afternoon.

“Solar farms take up a tiny fraction of the country. That will still be the case in 2035 when the government expects us to have four times current solar generation capacity”, said the industry body, citing the government’s April 2022 Energy Security Strategy, and a Carbon Brief evaluation later that year on solar farms’ impact on UK farmland.

“Solar farms are no threat to food security; they never have been and never will be. In fact, it’s the opposite,” said Solar Energy UK’s ‘roi soleil’, chief executive Chris Hewett.

“According to Defra, the main threat to food security is climate change, which is what solar farms are there to fight.”

“Without solar farms, hundreds of traditional farming businesses would have gone to the wall, unable to produce food without the security of a reliable income,” Hewett added.

Yesterday the government published the first release of Britain’s new official Food Security Index. The cost of energy to food producers was among key factors it identifies.

By the government’s own figures, the lobbyists claim, solar farms are the cheapest source of electricity, adding to their contribution to food security, to decarbonisation and thus to Britain’s broader national interests.

Advocates for solar farms say it is common for agriculture to continue in fields once panels are hooked up, typically through sheep grazing. Racks erected a metre and more above the soil also offer benefits to nature, such as providing shelter for wildlife and native flora, thus restoring natural habitats among intensively farmed ‘green deserts’.

Solar farms are demonstrably liked by their human neighbours, as consistently evidenced in Whitehall’s own surveys. Independent research in November by analysis firm Climate Barometer found that MPs & casual readers of newspapers vastly overestimate public opposition to farms’ introduction.

“The solar industry will continue to follow established principles”, the lobbyists’ statement went on. “(The industry) looks forward to the publication of the government-industry Solar Roadmap, which will light the way towards adding more than 50GW of solar capacity over the next decade”. The master plan is expected in coming weeks.

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Extending Contracts for Difference funds underpinning upcoming power auctions for the first time to £1 billion was Jeremy Hunt’s highlight in green power, offered yesterday in the Conservatives’ final budget before this year’s probable election.   The chancellor earmarked £800 million of the new money for offshore wind.

Representing wind generators, Renewables UK welcomed the increased incentive, but said Hunt had still missed his chance to maximise offshore capacity.

As incentivised by the chancellor, the group believes this summer’s Allocation Round 6 will confirm at best 5GW of new offshore turbines. But they pointed out that’s only half the capacity already identified by offshore developers as eligible to bid.

The government needed to do more, the wind representatives implied, to recover from last year’s disastrous bidding round, shunned completely by developers due to an technical price level botched within Whitehall.

Renewables UK spokesperson Dan McGrail welcomed the new cash, but stated: “The Treasury has missed the opportunity to maximise new offshore wind”.

Hunt’s caution, McGrail specified, “means a delay in attracting billions of pounds in private investment which we could have secured in this year’s auction to build and operate these projects, and opportunities to grow our supply chain.”

Britain has 14.7GW offshore wind fully operational now, supplying 14% of the nation’s electricity.

Representing suppliers across a wider range of low carbon technologies, the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA) said it was “disheartened” by Hunt’s lack of sector wide measures.

Tackling climate change and boosting the UK’s economy were not ‘either-or’ decisions, said REA policy director Frank Gordon.

“This is a political budget above all”, Gordon declared, that does not reflect the urgency of Net Zero. It is disappointing overall”.

The REA spokesperson said the Chancellor had not met his promise made last year for a UK response to President Biden’s $800 Billion investment in US green supply chains and manufacturing enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Gordon pointed out that the UK’s net zero economy grew 9% last year, in contrast to the stagnation in wider GDP, which ran at just 0.1%.

“And yet, sensible measures to support our UK success story have not been implemented”, the body observed.

“The Spring Statement arguably confirms the diminishing of Net Zero legislation as a recurring theme of this administration”, said the REA.

Extending for a further year the Energy Profits Levy, which caps profits from North Sea oil and gas companies, Hunt also tabled a £270 million joint investment in zero-carbon aircraft technology to develop a more sustainable aviation sector, and for zero emissions automotive technology.

The Green Industries Growth Accelerator fund will get a small increase of £120 million, to support the expansion of clean energy supply chains across the UK.

For solar power developers & suppliers, SolarEnergyUK’s head of policy Gemma Grimes branded Hunt’s package as “virtually nude of anything to bolster one of the UK’s fastest growing sectors: solar power”.

Britain’s solar industry very much hoped, Grimes added, that the Green Jobs Plan, expected later this month, will provide a firmer vision of how to grow the industry, by addressing the lack of critical skills in the workforce. Shortages were holding back deployment of the UK’s cheapest source of electricity, she said.

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Victory in the tax battle coincides today with standards body the MCS confirming 2023 has again smashed records for solar PV installations.

Up to early December, the Microgeneration Certification Scheme logged 183,022 certified PV installations this year, beating 2022’s full total by one third. Now an estimated 2 million UK homes, plus thousands of commercial buildings, make subsidy-free clean power on their roofs.

After years of representations from industry body SolarEnergy UK, the government this week corrected its anomaly of charging householders 20% VAT on power storage devices retrofitted to homes.  New generating equipment had long attracted 5% VAT at most.

As many as a million homes with rooftop panels may have been put off installing batteries, say installers, when confronted by the VAT anomaly.

From next February, VAT will no longer apply to domestic BESS, ministers announced. The concession also covers water-source heat pumps and diverters, a technology that redirects excess power from solar or other renewables to a specific load or appliance, usually a water heater.

Despite the VAT wrinkle, battery installations at both initial and retrofit stages have grown wings this year.  Today’s MCS figures reveal a total 4,400 of the nation’s 4,700 MCS-certified BESS devices were installed in 2023, nearly 800 in November alone.

Numbers of contractors accredited by the MCS to intall storage devices have mushroomed this year, from 50 in January to over 850 now.

Heat pumps, insulation, draught-proofing and other energy-saving equipment for home use have been exempt from VAT since the chancellor’s 2022 Spring Statement. The exemption also extended to purchase of home-scale batteries or BESS when installed at the same time as generating panels.

Falling prices of new home-scale batteries have mirrored the earlier drop in price of domestic solar generation.  That has led more and more homeowners with panels to approach battery installers in quest of increased savings from the generation kit.

Another knock-on effect, say industry reps, has been slowing home owners’ uptake of batteries for use in time-shifting and flex exercises, brought in by suppliers to relieve grid stress by paying homes to cut their electricity consumption or shift it into overnight use.

In a debate on the Energy Prices Act 2022 last year, LibDem Lord Foster of Bath said: “With more efficient and cheaper batteries now available, it makes sense for those with older systems to add a battery. The solar energy their panels generate can be used far more efficiently to the benefit of the homeowner and the country overall. However, the 20% VAT rate is likely to deter many.”

Trade body SolarEnergyUK had long lobbied on the issue, and were dismayed it had not featured in Chancellor Hunt’s Autumn Statement last month.

Chris Hewett, chief executive of the SolarEnergy UK trade group welcomed this week’s victory

“Although a long time coming, this is great news for sustainable energy in the UK“, said Hewett.

“Installing a battery energy storage system can double the savings offered by a home solar installation, so with energy prices as they are, retrofitting one is a great decision,” he said.

Heat pump installs hit records

Today’s MCS data shows installations of heat pumps are at record peaks, as consumers hedge against continuing high bills from suppliers.

More than 35,000 installations of air source or ground/water source technologies were registered in 2023. This figure brought the UK to over 200,000 certified heat pump installations since 2008.

Heat pump uptake remained high in the second year of the Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS), launched in May 2022 to encourage households across England and Wales An initial £5,000 incentive to strip out boilers was this year upped to £7,500.

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Screened on Monday, a ‘Panorama’ examination of Britain’s supposed unpreparedness for switching to EVs this decade has drawn the ire of the Renewable Energy Association.

The flagship BBC-TV documentary alleged installations of new public charging points would fall short of the total needed under the government’s Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate, announced in October 2021.  The policy sets a road map for ministers to deliver on its commitment that all new cars sold from 2030 must be pure EVs or hybrids.

Not true, the REA counter-blasted in a statement.   The ratio of electric vehicles per public charge point already greatly exceeds the ratio of ICE cars per petrol or diesel pump.

Deployment of charging infrastructure including public points grew 35% last year . The trade body expects the trend to continue.

The programme also claimed that a standard charge point takes an hour to deliver 38 miles of range.

“Not representative”, the REA rebutted.  “At any rapid chargepoint, most EVs on sale today can charge from 0 to 80% in under an hour. Some of them deliver over 300 miles of range”.

The UK already has over 40,000 public chargepoints, and 84% of EV owners able to charge at home, declared Matthew Adams, the REA’s transport policy manager

“Only 16% of one million-plus plug-in vehicles now on the road will need to use public charging infrastructure frequently”, Adams added.

“With the average journey in the UK being 20 minutes and with battery ranges going above 300 miles on many models, it is unlikely that these 16% of people will regularly use the public charging infrastructure”, he went on.

Panorama highlighted drivers’ difficulties with differing cash payment systems offered by charge point operators.   This is already being resolved, said the REA’s Adams.

Tough new rules from government will soon require every new point above 8kW and new and existing points above 50kW to offer readers for contactless payment. Many operators already deploy them. Best practice via PAS 1899 & other standards, said the REA, ensures chargepoint cabling is light and easily accessible.

Meanwhile trade body SolarEnergyUK has hit back at newspaper reports of drastic tail-offs of PV panels’ generating powers, once rooftops heat up beyond 40 degrees in summer.

Solar panels wilting in the heat is “a gross and fundamental misapprehension”, said the lobbyists, quoting a leading technical expert on the technology.

Alastair Buckley, Sheffield University’s professor of organic electronics  commented: “High temperatures affect only marginally the output of solar power – it’s a secondary effect.

“If it’s sunny and hot, you are going to get good power output. It doesn’t fall off a cliff,” Buckley advised.

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Among measures related to the spring budget, the finance ministry on Wednesday issued a call for evidence on scrapping its anomaly, whereby battery installations attract VAT if installed as a later upgrade to rooftop panels, but are VAT-free when installed with them.

Trade bodies including SolarEnergyUK have complained about the inconsistency introduced in the Johnson administration. They say it depresses take-up of power storage systems by commercial customers as well as by Britain’s 1.1 million PV-equipped homes.

The House of Lords has also heard criticism of the irregularity. “There should not be a fiscal incentive to install a battery at one time but not at another,” said Lord Foster of Bath last September, when advocating an amendment to the Energy Bill that would remove the anomaly.

“We should not penalise homeowners and occupiers looking to protect themselves from the energy price crisis”, said the LibDem peer.

In a post-Budget note to members, SolarEnergyUK welcomed the consultation, while decrying Hunt’s prioritising of nuclear and Carbon Capture & Storage over grid enhancements.  It decried too Hunt’s failure to spend to upgrade Britain’s transmission networks.

The lobbyists welcomed the Chancellor’s promotion until 2026 of ‘full expensing”. In a bid to boost Britain’s low business investment and low output productivity, ‘full expensing” allows the cost of new equipment to be 100% set off against tax in only one year.

SolarEnergyUK leader Chris Hewett was generally dismissive of Hunt’s measures.  Short-term opportunities such as a £63 million incentive for solar heated public swimming pools didn’t compensate for Hunt’s self-congratulation, he implied.

“(The) Budget was out of step with the mainstream trends in the global energy transition, where investment is pouring into solar, wind and energy storage“, said Hewett.

“The Chancellor appeared to conclude ‘Job done on renewables, now we will focus on CCS and nuclear’. He’s quite wrong.”

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The trio’s PPA, their second struck in twelve months, will fund the Greek-based developer’s construction of five consented farms from Dorset to Nottinghamshire.   Construction is due to be completed by early next year.

As offtaker, Centrica will sell a ‘significant’ proportion of their output to Vodafone, speeding the company towards its target of sourcing 44% of its power by 2025 from UK-based green sources. The remainder will be traded by the energy company.

Celebrating its customer’s underpinning of the new farms’ funding, Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea, pictured, said: “The deal gives Vodafone UK access to clean, high quality and affordable renewable electricity for the next ten years, offering price certainty and improved energy security”.

Already in the UK 100% of the grid electricity which Vodafone uses is from certified renewable sources, the Centrica boss noted.

In May the trio signed a PPA by which Centrica would sell the phone company 109 GWh from three new solar farms in the Midlands, totalling 110 MWp in capacity.  The first is now generating, with the rest soon to follow.  Along with two onshore wind farms in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, Vodafone UK now has dedicated access to renewable power from 10 sites across the UK.

The supply deal was announced as industry body SolarEnergyUK confirmed today that no longer subsidised instals of rooftop solar PV, overwhelmingly on homes and all under 50kWp in potential, doubled in 2022 on 2021’s figures.

Confirming figures from technical standards overseer the MCS, the solar lobbyists said over 130,000 roofs received new solar arrays last year, almost equalling completions for the previous two years combined.

Last month’s fixing of 16,043 new systems under 50kWp potential was three times the total for January 2022, setting a new monthly record for volumes of subsidy-free installations.

“Solar is surely one of the fastest-growing sectors in the UK right now”, said the lobbyists’ CEO Chris Hewett. “The rapid increase in sales is great news for the economy, public pockets, Net Zero and of course for energy security too”,

But he warned that even the current pace of installation must double again for consumer-scale systems to match the government’s target set for all solar power in its Energy Security Strategy published in April.

Even that heightened target is “clearly achievable”, Hewett advised, since it would be less than levels achieved in 2011 and 2012, at the height of the Feed-in Tariff era.

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Ian Rippon, CEO of technical standards assurers the MCS, told the committee that photovoltaic panels on home rooftops “as a mainstay of the Future Homes Standard is critical”.

Presented by the government as the biggest re-think yet of much criticised, seldom enforced building controls, the Future Homes Standard is intended to improve Britain’s notoriously lax standards of home insulation, and ease dwellings towards Net Zero compliance.  Implemented in part since June, the new measures’ full introduction is scheduled for 2025.

“The problem now is that it’s – (PV installation) in pockets, depending on local building regulations”, Rippon explained.

Beside him, Chris Hewett, boss of lobbyists SolarEnergyUK, said industry expectations now are that “pretty much every English home built from 2025 will have some solar generation capacity”.

The government’s Energy Generator Levy, a windfall tax on the sector now facing at least one challenge in the courts, Hewett described as “a mistake”, producing an “unlevel playing field”.  It gives solar developers no incentive to offset it through investment, said the lobbying boss, despite Britain’s dire need to be weaned off natural gas.

Quizzed on UK-wide targets to have 70GW of solar power capacity generating by 2035, – against 15.5GW today including farms – , Hewett replied that the aspiration was “definitely enough… and it’s feasible”.

Solar’s projected rise to contribute 10% of Britain’s power demand, up from 4% now, is needed to meet national needs growing from increasing electrification of heating, homes and transport, the PV industry believes.

Installers and suppliers expect about two-thirds of UK solar PV capacity by 2035 to come from ground-mounted racks, with residential and commercial roofs providing the rest. Floating solar farms, such as on a Thames Water reservoir near Heathrow airport, could contribute after 2035, said Hewett.

Written evidence cited by Anna McMorrin MP warned that grid connections are not speeding up. Farm developers face waits well into the 2030s.  The MP described the National Grid as a “pretty broken system”.

Regional targets for grid connections could spur DNOs to respond quicker, Alastair Buckley, Sheffield University’s professor of organic electronics believed.

Committee chair and Conservative MP Philip Dunne later suggested that grid access could be the subject of its own dedicated inquiry.

Green MP Caroline Lucas suspected so-called Smart Export Guarantees offered by power retailers are too miserly to woo homeowners into solar adoption.  MCS boss Rippin agreed. “It’s been taken over by the economics of cheaper solar. There is a problem of fairness” he added.

Cheap capital is needed to spur homeowners to install PV, Hewett told MPs. He cited 0% loans made available by Scotland’s government for insulation, as well as retro-fitting PV & heat pumps.

Dr Chris Case leads technology innovators at Oxford PV.  Two years ago, the firm’s perovskite enhancement pushed standard silicon cells to a record conversion efficiency of over 29%. That’s fully a third better than current standards on the world’s roofs.

Case described as “perverse” the Treasury’s treatment of VAT on home batteries storage systems. Homeowners must shoulder the tax’s 20% burden when adding a battery to pre-installed panels.  Installing both at the same time attracts no VAT.

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Parliamentary manoeuvres at Westminster saw right-wingers allying with the party’s minority of ecologically-exercised MPs, resulting Sunak offering public consultations ending in April to lift David Cameron’ ban, now seven years old, on constructing land-based windfarms.

On Tuesday evening Sunak said he would permit stakeholders’ representations on Britain’s national planning policy, opening the door to a restoration of on-shore erection of turbines.  Approval of  land-based schemes will be confined to local councils, rather than having them passed to Whitehall’s inspectors as items of national infrastructure.

A single objection to any application for onshore turbines currently spells failure now at the planning stage.  In the five years to 2020, only 16 new turbines were approved in England, a 96% drop on pre-ban erections.

Development in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty will remain prohibited, under Sunak’s proposals.

The premier eased Cameron’s curb to head off a group of rebels led by former minister Simon Clarke. It included his two immediate predecessors at No 10, plus Alok Sharma, chair of last year’s CoP26 climate talks.

Clarke, who had tabled a motion opposing the ban, welcomed the premier’s concession.  “Onshore wind is the cheapest form of energy bar none”,  he said.  “What I and fellow Conservative MPs have said is simply that communities ought to be able to make this decision for themselves, rather than have Whitehall to rule it out,” he said.

So did developers.  Octopus Energy have since early 2021 run their Fan Club, which offers 50% tariff cuts to homeowners happy to welcome a new turbine into their postcode.

“We’re huge fans of onshore wind and so is the overwhelming majority of the British public, Zoisa North-Bond, boss of the firm’s generation arm, said.  She cited a recent YouGov survey commissioned by the generator, indicating that 87% of people would support in a turbine in their community, in return for cheaper bills.

“Onshore wind is one of the cheapest and quickest forms of energy we can generate right here on our soil – and by removing the red tape, we can build it fast for communities that want it.

Just as green, still as pleasant

Chris Heaton-Harris, now Sunak’s Northern Ireland secretary, in 2015 led Tory nimbys who strong-armed Cameron into erecting near-insuperable barriers to new English turbines.

Solar developers took heart too this week, as  Sunak’s environment secretary Thérèse Coffey explicitly reversed a threat from her predecessor to stop solar farms being built on moderate-quality Grade 3B farmland, home to most of Britain’s existing 14GWp of solar.

Ranil Jayawardena, environment secretary in Liz Truss’s 44-day administration, had mooted a ban, in deference to his doomed boss’ prejudice that ‘solar paraphenalia’ allegedly threatened Britain’s food security.

Speaking to the Commons’ environment, food and rural affairs committee on Tuesday, Coffey backed “a lot more” solar generation on farms, including on 3b-quality land.

Farming minister Mark Spencer later echoed Coffey in a newspaper interview.

“We shouldn’t be stopping farmers who want to diversify their income from doing that as that would be harmful, so I’d have no problem with them putting some solar panels down on 3b land,” said Spencer.

“Tuesday was a turning point for the entire renewables sector”, said Chris Hewett, chief executive of trade body Solar Energy UK.

“It will be a great relief to the solar industry to hear  Thérèse Coffey supports existing planning rules. These have successfully encouraged development away from the best-quality agricultural land while recognising the critical need to expand solar farms in response to the climate and energy price crisis. This looks like a significant shift from the anti-solar rhetoric of her predecessor,”  said Hewett

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