Labour says Tories ‘actively dismantling’ solar industry as installs fall 94%
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The Labour party has accused the government of “actively dismantling” the UK’s solar power industry after new installations by households collapsed by 94% last month.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, used prime minister’s questions to challenge the government’s record on climate action after scrapping subsidies for domestic solar panels from April.
Standing in for Jeremy Corbyn, Long-Bailey said solar power had the potential to cut household bills and carbon emissions while creating thousands of jobs.
“But the government, for some reason, appears to be determined to kill it off, while continuing to cheerlead for fracking,” she said.
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The opposition said data showed the scrapping of home panel subsidies from April caused new solar power capacity to fall from 79MW in March to only 5MW last month.
At that rate it would take the government until 2092 to match Labour’s commitment to install solar panels on an additional 1.75m homes within its first term in power.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/home-solar-panel-installations-fall-by-94-as-subsidies-cut
It's probably more because they're fucking useless in a country that's cloudy 90% of the time. Wind at least makes use of our shitty weather.
Solar panels work fine in the UK. I have a 6 kW east west array and it's great.
I live in a region with similar climate to britain, we have sunny days.
Except they're completely useless in the winter when the sun is hardly out and usually low in the sky, may be not so bad down in the south but for the most of the country it's barely worth the money. Better to just put the money into offshore wind, which is what they've been investing in mostly.
I'm in the Midlands. Offshore wind is great but I don't think I can afford my own turbine man. Both are intermittent sources, and a good mix of both is the most ideal. Last summer wasn't great for wind but it was amazing for solar for example.
I was gonna post, "how the fuck does an array of glass attached to a giant battery create a fucking gaseous byproduct??????" before properly re-reading what u said.
yeah after some googling on solar panel production, I get the impression that each solar panel has a static footprint on carbon dioxide when made, giant solar power plants actually have a carbon footprint based on the water they use and the industrial scale (which is apparently 50g of CO2 per kWh compared to coal's 975g of CO2 per kWh), but that home solar panels don't fall under that. Also, households can install solar to offset their emissions+grid reliance, you can't install a single wind turbine in the same way.
Based on what I know of bigbongland, it's windy as fuck and cloudy as all hell? then yeah wind's probably better than solar. But saying solar does more harm than good (with the current power source being coal in the uk) is disingenuous.
Even that isn't entirely accurate. Coal has been a minority of our power generation for a long time, and we've been having ever-longer bursts of no-coal periods.
This is the type of shit an American republican would say
"how will you make energy when the sun goes down!!!!"
Trump literally said "Let’s put up some windmills. When the wind doesn’t blow, just turn off the television darling, please. There’s no wind, please turn off the television quickly."
Do you have a study or evidence to back this up? AFAIK even on cloudy days, solar panels still work. Not 100% capacity, but enough to keep a number of lights running.
Generally I find the people saying this are either idiots who think we shouldn't use them or electrical engineers who are talking about the complexities of running a grid and pointing out the need for a variety of sources.
God, I wish the Democrats had enough balls to get to the point this succinctly instead of acting like pussyfooting little bitches whenever they're urged to stand up to the Republicans and their corporate overlords.
"Look at the benefits this new paradigm can bring, even ones your side's voters care about. Yet you conservative assholes are determined to bury it while plugging your ears and chanting for a destructive, outdated one."
Thing is wind power takes up a lot of space per turbine, I live near a good bunch of them and drive past them as well.
Solar panels on houses take up no space as they are on already existing buildings, and putting them on a street of buildings gets you a small plant at the cost of no space and even if it is just warming water you are still stopping dependence on gas.
Also contrary to common belief the UK does have sunlight and we don't live in year round darkness.
The year-round darkness is only metaphorical
Wish people would also learn how solar panels actually work as well, they're nothing like how they used to be where they required straight sunlight to produce any power.
You can have an average overcast day and modern panels will still happily produce a fair amount of power sure they are more effective in full sunlight but so are turbines on a windy day. Its no different to having a small breeze or a strong gust going.
Panels still produce power as long as there is UV light present, solar tech is not stuck in the 80s, go learn how how they work before making poorly informed posts.
Another counter-intuitive thing about them is that they're actually more efficient when it's cold. So lower temperatures might counter the relative lack of sunlight to some extent.
agreed is not like a cloud is going to block all the UV light is it, i mean plants would be pretty fucked then and we know we can still get sunburnt on overcast days
The amazing thing about this also is panels are less efficient on houses as oppose to free standing, since they must be placed at the angle of the roof as oppose to directly to the sun.
And yet they're still excellent and produce more than enough power, even in overcast.
a lot of people are forgetting that the solar panel industry is steadily improving and that the efficiency of solar panels is increasing while the cost of manufacture and installation is going down
at this point it would make economic sense to encourage a transition over to solar power considering the number of jobs it would create
we shouldn't be seeing this is an opportunity to create jobs, but instead an opportunity to power the country on sustainable and cheap energy source - jobs to come along with that, not for the sake of jobs.
"to save the planet" doesn't get buys from the rich.
"creates jobs and produces money" does.
Besides, there's no reason to not advertise for both.
yeah but i barely mention about saving the planet, i mostly mention economic reasons which i think the general public like to hear
I don't get companies that lobby for this. Fossil fuels are finite. We know this, everyone knows this. Why.... Would they not also invest in tech like this? Like, shell investing in solar, wind, maybe even nuclear, all while still selling fossil fuels?
I don't get it.
To dumb this down even more, just say "If theres no light during the day to power solar panels, how can are you able to see"?
To play devil's advocate, solar panels have always been a big investment for households. Sure, they drastically reduce power bills but isn't the average pay-back period 7 years? It's a lot of upfront money most people aren't willing to pay (not using this an excuse, just saying this is most peoples thoughts, I am still very very pro renewables and agree we need to make them a common house feature)
Yeah but they could have a slice of everything instead of just fossil fuels. What I'm saying is, why don't they invest in a renewable division as well as all their fossil fuel stuff.
Solar is down because Britain has more reliable wind. Scotland is proof of that.
This is an entirely speculative guess.
Couldn't be anything to do with the Tories just killing all the subsidies could it? Sounds unlikely such a thing would be related.
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