The Leader of the Opposition and of the Liberal Democrat Group on Oldham Council, Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, has responded negatively to a Government consultation proposing that subsidies for renewable energy schemes be drastically slashed from January 2016.

The new Conservative Government is proposing to reduce the payments of a Feed in Tariff (or FiT) by up to 90% in the new-year to householders installing solar panels or community owned renewable power projects.

Under the previous Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, Ed Davey MP, a regime was created that provide generous FiT payments to such schemes.  Community owned schemes were also able to seek pre-accreditation once planning permission was granted to ensure that they could access the current FiT rate for six months guaranteeing a level of income that would attract investors through community share issues.

Cllr Sykes said: “The Coalition Government had an excellent record of providing support to community energy with over 5,500 such projects established.  The current Government claims to want to continue this support, yet its actions run contrary to these intentions.”

“Remember it is Prime Minister David Cameron who is alleged to have said ‘let’s get rid of all the Green Crap from Government’ – sadly now he seems to want to live up to this statement at a time when Britain is facing a massive challenge to meet its agreed targets to reduce carbon emissions.”

“The Conservative Government has so far abolished pre-accreditation making it far harder to establish a new scheme that is financially viable and these new proposals will provide insufficient guaranteed income to continue to develop community owned renewable energy schemes.”

Government proposals to reduce the subsidy will be especially felt by householders with solar panels or by investors in roof-mounted community owned solar schemes. Here the payment will be reduced to 1.63p from 12.47p per kilowatt hour.

Cllr Sykes added: “I recognise that over time the Government may need to reduce it’s spending on renewable support overall but the FiT regime has worked well to link ever-decreasing subsidies with decreasing costs.”

“Community energy makes an increasing contribution to Britain’s energy needs, and on some days renewables provide more power than nuclear; all this power generation comes without increasing the nation’s carbon footprint.”

Community energy schemes also produce an income for investors who spend this in the local community and which they often reinvest in new projects generating further capacity.  In addition, each project establishes a community dividend used to kick start other schemes or to support energy behaviour training.

“This is a win-win situation.  Communities produce their own energy making them more self-sufficient and more sustainable.  The money generated by selling the power is paid in dividends to local shareholders who spent this money in their own community and the community dividend also supports good work in that community. Surely this must be far better than supporting large commercial schemes that simply put money in the hands of the Big Six energy providers.”

The argument that subsidies for renewable energy are too expensive seems bizarre to Cllr Sykes:

“The country desperately needs investment in community owned clean energy projects to fulfil its targets on CO2 emissions and prevent the unpredictable, but likely disastrous, effects of global warming.”

“The government appears willing to hugely subsidise the nuclear industry, but a much smaller subsidy to renewables would yield much greater dividends and without the deadly waste and contamination that comes with nuclear power.”

“The Oldham Liberal Democrat Group is of the view that retaining FiT payments at current levels and restoring the pre-accreditation scheme would be the best ways to support continued investment in such schemes; therefore we are fundamentally opposed to these proposals”.