An open letter to Greg Barker, butcher of the feed-in tariff

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 22 Mar 2011, 18:07

Huw Irranca-Davies (Shadow Energy Minister) - The Guardian - 22/03/11

Greg – it is not too late to spare your blushes. Work with us and let's fix this case study in how not to amend policy.

Article continues ...

stumuzz · Post by **stumuzz** » 22 Mar 2011, 21:53

Quite agree with limiting the subsidies of large solar farms or commercial installations, for a number of reasons.

1/ FIT are funded by a levy on fuel bills, so like TEQ's they hit the poor hardest. The single mum struggling to pay her fuel bills is directly funding a solar farm for an uber capitalist.

2/ Domestic solar PV installations have a double bang for the buck. When the householder sees the export earning cash, there is an extra incentive to switch things off. Therefore not only do we use less fossil fuel in generation, we also supply more green energy to the grid. This incentive is not there with a large commercial installation.

3/ Schools, hospitals, social housing and any other quango/ public sector organisation should not have a pot of cash to spend on panels.If they have got this cash hand it back to the treasury so they can lower tax.

4/ Solar farms take up agri land so are morally the same as biofuel i.e turning food into fuel.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 22 Mar 2011, 22:07

stumuzz wrote:TEQ's they hit the poor hardest.

Not understood TEQs yet then.

cubes · Post by **cubes** » 22 Mar 2011, 22:14

TEQ will hit the poor hardest - they have the least resources to buy more TEQ or replace energy hungry devices if nothing else.