According to a new survey, most UK councils lack an official ‘solar strategy’ and do not plan to add any new solar power to their portfolio in the next five years, with almost half pointing to the lack of incentives from the Government as the main reason. The second most cited reason is the lack of capital to invest.
The LG Solar group (
www.lg-solar.com) sent Freedom of Information requests to 435 local authorities, with a range of questions covering their solar strategies, and responses were received from 332.
A total of 76% said they had no plans to invest in solar power. Meanwhile, the number of new domestic feed-in tariff installations fell below 2,000 in December, the survey found.
There were cuts to the subsidy scheme in January 2016, which caused a surge of 22,443 installations in December 2015.
Bob Mills, UK senior sales manager for LG, said: “To find out that the lack of Government support is the main barrier
to further investment is deeply saddening.
“Our research has revealed that the Government’s policy towards solar is ineffective — and completely non-existent in some cases. Until there is clarity on solar strategy, we will continue to see public money wasted on out-dated and over-priced energy projects.”