POWER TO THE PEOPLE? PERHAPS NOT...

News that the Con Dem Government has brought in the planned reduction of the feed-in tariff before the consultation process has even closed should not come a much of a surprise. The consultation process runs until Friday, 23rd December yet the changes to the feed in tariff were brought in on Monday, 12th December – so much for consultation. Friends of the Earth and two solar power companies have rightly challenged the UK Government in the High Court (Tuesday 20th December) over the plans.

The Feed-in tariffs (FIT) scheme was primarily designed to encourage investment in renewable energy and reduce costs for households, it's reduction could have a significant impact on the renewable energy sector in Wales. Developing renewable solar energy should be an integral part of developing sustainable future energy supplies and should play a key role in helping to combat the growing challenge of climate change.

The apparent speed with which the changes were brought in and the public demonstration of any lack of real sincerity in what could be described as a nominal consultation process is disappointing. The renewable energy sector is a growing employer in Wales with real potential for significant growth in future years, yet this ill-thought out change could put jobs at risk and derail expansion plans.

Feed-in tariffs give ordinary people the chance to take part in the fight against climate change through generating their own renewable energy and to make savings on their own household energy costs. Naturally these changes will make it more difficult for people to do this and in my opinion this change is driven by a short term desire to save money. So much for the Con Dem pledge to produce 15% of the country's total energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Part of the problem is the lack of any real sincerity on the part of the last few UK Westminster Governments when it comes to developing the vital renewable energy sector. The Department for Energy and Climate Change (and its predecessors) have effectively slowed down the development of the renewable energy sector and actively blocked the development of tidal lagoons and wave energy having a bias towards the grossly expensive nuclear industry.

The last thing that the UK Government and the cartel of Big Six energy companies want is for people to be saving money and to be less dependent on the large energy providers. It should be pretty clear to most people by now that the UK Government simply does not favour or wish to encourage smaller scale community beneficial energy projects.

Perhaps if you take the long view, a rapidly expanding small scale renewable energy sector would (eventually and perhaps quite quickly) threaten the energy company profits, their virtual monopoly on energy supply and useful taxes on the energy companies profits. Would any Westminster government want to reduce it's income and help people to save money and break their dependency on large scale energy providers and large scale energy developments. Hmmm...