members of the UK public are firmly behind renewable energy

The UK public has continued to show support for renewable energy in a series of surveys conducted across the UK. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change 80% of those who responded to the survey stated that they were in support of electricity, heat and fuel to come from renewable sources. In addition to this nearly 2 thirds of UK inhabitants said they would be happy to see a large scale renewable energy development in their area.

The purpose of this questionnaire was to ascertain what the major challenges to the UK are in today’s climate including inflation, energy supply and taxation among others. Among the topics of importance those relating to energy have jumped several places to the forefront of concerns among UK residents. 85% of those surveyed stated that they had considerable concern for future increases in energy costs. However, this is could be down to the increased profile of energy bills in the recent months as many political parties have been using them as an emotional point with voters. Read the rest of this entry »

Hot on the heels of the UKs freshly launched (and pioneering for Europe) Solar Strategy, the UK government granted approval for 8 renewable energy projects in the UK for 2014. These are the first set of projects to be awarded under the government’s energy market reforms. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Month Engineering and Technology giant Siemens announced their plans for large scale wind turbine production and installation facilities in the north of the UK. The 2 sites are the Green port Hull project which has been announced previously, and will cover service construction and assembly and the newly revealed plan for a new rotor blade manufacturing facility in Paull, East Riding.

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The UK are the first nation in Europe to have announced and launched a dedicated solar strategy.  The Department of Energy and Climate Change announced in early April 2014 that their solar strategy would be published, this is the first dedicated document to solar energy strategy by a European government, and is a testament to the massive level of growth that the solar sector has bared witness to over the past few years.

The newly published strategy has placed a particular emphasis on encouraging the deployment of rooftop solar systems including the currently slow but steady growth of the commercial sized systems. The document also confirms the government’s goal to reach one million solar powered homes by 2015.

Energy Minister Greg Barker said “we have managed to put ourselves among the world leaders on solar and this strategy will help us stay there” Read the rest of this entry »

New figures released this month from DECC have shown and increased interest in the Green Deal Scheme

Since the scheme was launched in January there have been over 9,200 assessments lodged.

The latest figures show that the number of assessments has dramatically picked up over the last month, with 7,465 assessments lodged in March – a 331% increase from February’s figures.

In addition to the growing figures, the Green Deal Finance Company has confirmed a £244 million funding package with DECC, the UK Green Investment Bank and other stakeholders. Read the rest of this entry »

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has finally confirmed that Green Deal finance can be used to part-fund the cost of a Solar PV installation.

They have issued a document which clearly sets out in detail how the two schemes work together following an uncertain period when the scheme was originally launched.

According to the document, the amount of Green Deal finance available will depend on how much money a proposed Solar array will save homeowners on their electricity bill.  Crucially, even if the amount saved is not enough to fund the entire cost of the installation, with Green Deal finance being able to be used to pay for part of the cost. Read the rest of this entry »

More companies have joined the legal battle seeking damages from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) following its “legally flawed” cuts to the feed-in tariff scheme last year.

The companies claim that the “unlawful and unfair” cuts to the feed-in tariff caused substantial damages to the Solar companies’ respective businesses.

The group is claiming that the cuts made to the feed-in tariff led to a dramatic slump in orders and forced thousands of redundancies across many businesses.  As a result, the companies are seeking around £140 million in damages from the department to cover their loses. Read the rest of this entry »