Solar Trade Association:Government neglects solar’s retail potential

The Solar Trade Association has highlighted an apparent shortcoming in the Committee on Climate Change’s renewable energy report that could underestimate the potential of the UK solar industry.

The trade body claims the report neglects the solar industry’s potential as a retail industry, gauging its potential for future growth only by looking at wholesale prices.

‘[The report] underestimated the potential for solar in the UK through its apparent lack of understanding of the retail energy marketplace,’ the Solar Trade Association said in a statement.

‘The Committee for Climate Change has failed to recognise that solar power should be compared to retail rather than wholesale electricity prices.’

The Committee for Climate Change is an independent body tasked with advising the UK government on setting carbon budgets. It reports to parliament on progress the country has made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

While its latest renewable energy report acknowledged the huge solar resources on offer in the UK, the Solar Trade Association claims it has given a limited outlook of the economic part the technology will play in the country’s gross energy industry through until 2030.

Howard Johns, chairman of the Solar Trade Association, said, ‘[The Committee for Climate Change has] made the very basic mistake of comparing the costs of solar with the costs of large-scale wind and nuclear. Solar works directly on your roof and therefore cuts out the costs of networks, supplier profits and all sorts of additional costs.

‘Solar competes directly with what the end-user pays for electricity – the retail, not whole, electricity market. That is a critical difference when evaluating the different technologies.’

Johns said that the Department for Energy and Climate Change similarly overlooked the industry’s potential as a key part of the future competitive retail market in its Electricity Market Reform proposals.

A recent report by European Photovoltaic Industry Association showed that even at the wholesale level, solar power will be competitive with new gas plants in some countries within less than five years. Germany anticipates deriving ten per cent of its electricity from solar power by 2020.

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