Anyone remember, 3 days after coalition took power, David Cameron making his promise to lead the \u201cgreenest Government ever\u201d? I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t, it’s hardly up there with the Kennedy assassination or the Moon landing, but nonetheless it was an important pledge at an important time for environmental policy and if you’re going to make a statement like that at a time when the world’s attention is focussed on you have to expect that you’ll be judged on it.<\/p>\n
So how does Mr Cameron and his coalition measure up? The public perception is that he comes up well short. A recent YouGov poll<\/a> revealed that as few as 1 in 50 believe that his is delivering on his \u201cgreenest ever\u201d pledge with 1 in 10 saying that this Government was actually less green than most previous Governments. That’s the perception, what about the facts?<\/p>\n The biggest positive for the Government in its quest to be green is the Green Deal Scheme<\/a>. This is an ambitious project to increase the energy efficiency of up to 14 million homes by offering cheap loans to pay for things like insulation, draught proofing and more efficient heating systems. The loans are structured in such a way as to ensure (theoretically at least) that the energy bill savings which result from the improvements are greater than the repayments so that with no initial outlay by the home owner he has nothing to lose.<\/p>\n Critics say that the Green Deal<\/a> is just a cynical attempt to get rid of the subsidies provided schemes like the feed in tariff, renewable heat incentive and others. Proponents on the other hand point to the fact that the best way to cut fuel bills and reduce carbon emissions is to reduce energy use rather than encourage the use of renewable energy and the Green Deal does this where other schemes do not. They also make the point that funding for any subsidy scheme will run out eventually whereas the Green Deal is sustainable long term.<\/p>\n In terms of environmental policy the biggest, or at least the most well publicised act of the coalition has been to cut the subsidies paid to the owners of solar panels. The feed in tariff<\/a> was a scheme introduced by Labour under which installers of solar panels<\/a> receive a payment in pence per kilowatt hour for each kilowatt hour of energy that their solar panels produce. Although they are paid for producing it, they actually get to keep the electricity for their own use.<\/p>\n At the outset the rate was 43.1p per kwh. In less than two years in charge the coalition has cut this in half. It is true that cuts to the rate were always part of the plan, the idea being that as the solar panel market grew the cost of new installations would fall so that the same percentage returns could be achieved with a lower tariff rate, but the scale of the cuts and the handling of them has drawn widespread criticism and have demonstrated an apparent lack of support for solar subsidies within the coalition.<\/p>\nThe Green Deal<\/h2>\n
Solar Panel Subsidy Cuts and Future Spending Plans<\/h2>\n