The Government has confirmed its decision to end pre-accreditation for big commercial solar roofs and small solar farms from having any certainty under the Feed-in Tariff meaning they will not be granted access to FiT rates before project completion.
The move gets rid of the ability to ‘pre-accredit’ to a fixed tariff level, meaning that complex community and commercial projects that can take longer to complete could have to deal with constantly reducing tariff levels between the start and finish of the project.
This comes just weeks after the Government published proposals for whole scale cuts to feed-in tariffs. As of January 2016, residential, commercial and solar farms will see tariffs cut by up to 87% and will likely cause the closure of the entire scheme.
Leonie Greene, head of external affairs at the Solar Trade Association, said: “Just 16 out of 2,372 respondents supported the proposal to do away with pre-accreditation, and yet the Government has gone ahead and done it anyway. They have simply ignored the overwhelming opposition from across the renewables industry and beyond.
“Renewables and solar are all about giving power to the people, this is going in the opposite direction.”
An alliance of over 100 organisations including big household names, farming groups, co-operatives and local government representatives, wrote to the Prime Minister expressing “great concern” around the expected changes to the Feed-in Tariff support system for small-scale renewables.
The alliance included the National Union of Teachers, the Diocese of London and the Electrical Contractors Association and furniture giant IKEA.