Solar subsidies will be dramatically cut by more than 50% to 21p/kWh (currently 43.3p), according to leaked government documents that appeared briefly on the Energy Saving Trust website.

While the document noted that the proposed new tariffs were currently “under consultation and are not final”, the figure is in line with earlier speculation that the amount of subsidy would be substantially reduced.

A Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) spokesman said: “We’ll be publishing a full consultation on changes to the solar PV tariff changes in parliament on Monday. The Energy Saving Trust inadvertently published a draft of documentation on its website that was neither final nor accurate.”

The government are looking at the new tariffs having found that the global cost of solar PV panels has fallen significantly since the scheme started, meaning generators were seeing returns of around 10% on their investment, far higher than originally intended and solar companies are absorbing some of the extra profits.

Should the tariff levels be reduced to the new levels, the scheme would be aiming for 4% annual return on investment which still compares favourably with the returns available on various other types of financial investment.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Clean Energy Cash Back, Clean Energy Options, Climate Change, Energy efficiency, Incentives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.