FIT and proper Professor Eicke Weber,
head of the Fraunhofer Solar Research Institute in Freiburg, which
has successfully spun off 13 companies to exploit the new
technologies it has developed, says the potential for renewables
backed by an FIT is enormous. He expects the 2.5 gigawatts of
solar PV installed in Germany (half of the world total) to
skyrocket. "Within five to 10 years I expect this to rise to
100-150 gigawatts. This market is growing 40% a year."
He says renewables are sufficiently technically advanced to meet
the world's demands for clean energy in the coming decades. "The
technology is there. We don't need any great breakthroughs."
A massive shift to renewables in the coming decades could, he
estimates, be achieved for say £250bn, roughly equivalent to what
the US has spent on the Iraq war. "And their economy has easily
swallowed that," he says.
In Britain, by contrast, going green is neither easy nor cheap.
The government's stop-go attempts to stimulate renewables have
made it difficult for anyone to make long-term decisions.
Britain's renewables industry has struggled as grants for new
technologies have been plagued by problems and were recently even
slashed by the DTI, now renamed DBERR (Department for Business,
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform).
The DBERR has also restricted the list of companies it permits to
carry out renewable installations, keeping prices of new
technologies higher than they need be.
The government's main form of support is the "renewable
obligations" system, which forces electrical generators to source
a growing share of their power from renewables. Though it has had
some success promoting offshore wind power, it has had little
impact on micro generation, solar power in particular. In an
acknowledgement of this, the government is considering introducing
banding for different technologies, but not until 2009.
Experts say it is not delivering fast enough and a campaign for a
feed-in tariff is growing, although the government dismisses FITs
as too "interventionist".
"The renewables industry in this country exists in spite of the
government, not because of it," says Alan Simpson, Labour MP for
Nottingham South.
He recently introduced a private member's bill that would bring in
a feed-in tariff and is trying to get a ground-breaking
zero-carbon project called "O-zone" off the ground in an area of
central Nottingham, which would include renewable energy and the
upgrading of houses to reduce their energy use and loss. But it
will only fly if it wins lottery funding.
Out of Merton Other towns, also frustrated at the lack of action by central
government, have taken matters into their own hands. The London
Borough of Merton introduced the now legendary "Merton rule"
requiring any new developments to contain technology that
generates at least 10% of their energy from renewables. Many
councils have adopted it and some have raised the bar to 20%.
One of the UK's greenest towns is Woking, Surrey. It began moving
into renewables a decade ago and now has combined heat and power
and fuel cell systems providing heat and electricity to many
buildings in the town centre and 600kw of installed solar PV -
about 5% of Britain's total.
"People give us a lot of credit but we need a reality check. In
the grand scheme of things it is a bit pathetic," says Ray Morgan, Woking's chief executive.
