FiTs Appeal Decision Delayed
Following my post last week Update on the Feed in Tariff Scheme, I was fully expecting to be able to report on the results of the last Friday’s hearing at the Court of Appeal by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and to outline a positive outcome for the Solar installation industry as a whole.
Yet here we are, still in limbo and without a turning point decision either way.
The court hearing on Friday ended without a decision and it looks unlikely that one will be made for at least a week. According to DECC, however, it could be many weeks away.
Meanwhile, contracts are still being cancelled, redundancies made and businesses closing down because potential solar consumers are being put off by the indecision surrounding the future of the Feed-in Tariff Scheme.
The Solar industry desperately needs to be able to move forward without this hammer blow and months of uncertainty.
Even when the Court of Appeal reaches a decision, it will be weeks or even months before another court hearing will decide the industry’s fate. And if it were to allow DECC to appeal the High Court’s decision (that its proposed action to reduce the FiTs tariff, before the end of a consultation period, was wrong), there will be more months of instability and indecision.
Perhaps now it’s time for the industry to get behind a massive marketing push to promote the many other benefits of Solar. FiTs or no FiTs, there are still many reasons to invest in Solar technology and Solar as a renewable energy. Firstly, it’s a clean-source energy, with inherent environmental values. It gives consumers control over the production of their own electricity for their own consumption so they won’t be as much at the mercy of the security of national supply like the rest of us; it will eventually return more than the cost of investment through cheap energy production and by adding value to properties.
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