Solarcentury welcomes STA’s Great British Solar Manifesto

Solarcentury has welcomed the release of the Solar Trade Association’s (STA) Great British Solar Manifesto:

The STA media release is here.

Seb Berry Head of External Affairs at Solarcentury and Vice-Chairman of the STA said:

“In the last seven years, solar power has become a mainstream technology in the UK and worldwide, visible on homes and businesses in virtually every community. Nearly 900,000 UK homes now have solar power, an incredible achievement. Following a series of unhelpful policy changes and u-turns since 2015 however, UK solar deployment has fallen recently by approximately 80%, as the Government has chosen to focus on much more expensive technologies such as new nuclear, while many other countries have raced ahead with further solar deployment.

After a policy-induced difficult couple of years for solar in the UK, our view is that the UK market can only go up in the next five years, driven by further solar price falls and the success of industry initiatives such as our own IKEA solar homes partnership. But we also need a Government for the next five years that will stop penalising solar and that will deliver a level regulatory playing field for our technology. The new Government should also end the absurdity of excluding cheap solar from CfD auctions. As the Aldersgate Group pointed out recently, that common-sense policy would help to decarbonise the power system in the most cost-effective way.”