Britain installed only about 270 solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on houses in 2007, compared with 130,000 in Germany, new Government figures have revealed.
Germany installed 1,100 megawatt peak of solar PV capacity last year, equivalent to two conventional power stations.

Dr Lynne Jones, a Labour MP who has pressed BERR with a series of questions on the rollout of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP), criticised energy minister Malcolm Wicks for claiming that the government’s support for renewables was strong. “That is a pathetic response and the government is giving out misleading information about the effectiveness of the British system compared to that of, say, Germany.”
Britain is the worst performer in the EU, behind Malta and Luxembourg, in its use of renewable energy.

But a document leaked to The Guardian newspaper shows that BERR grants for households to install solar, wind or hydro-power would be underspent by £10m over the next year. That is more than half the £18m allocated for the three years to March 2009, the paper points out.

The LCBP was cut back last May when the scheme was revised, leading many people to give up trying to install renewable technology. For example, for solar PV, the maximum grant was cut to £2,500, rendering the systems uneconomical for homeowners.
For solar hot water panels, there were 853 grants made in 2007, half the 1,610 in the seven months from May 2006, when the programme started. There were 110 grants for micro wind turbines, compared with 380 in the first seven months of 2006.  For ground source heat pumps, there were 30 or 40 grants a month in 2006. In October, November and December last year there were none.

Applications are being accepted for the LCBP through to mid-2009, but this will depend on the actual rate of applications, BERR says. Ed Matthew, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth,  said the government should amend its energy bill to ensure that households and businesses that generate small-scale renewable power and export it to the national grid are paid a premium rate, or feed-in tariff.

n Conservative MPs Charles Hendry and John Baron jointly submitted an amendment to the Energy Bill on 14th February on Feed-in tariffs. It reads: “The Secretary of State may by regulations make provisions to introduce feed-in tariffs for renewable micro-generation and decentralised energy.”

u http://www.lowcarbonbuildingsphase2.org.uk/