News Article
UK Government Loses FiT Appeal
The Supreme Court in the United Kingdom has rejected an appeal by the Government meaning the courts have decided the government acted illegally in trying to impose tariff cuts before the review. The panel of Supreme Justices have denied the government the chance to appeal against the decision.
In a boost for the industry the ruling means PV installations registered after the December 12th deadline and before March 3rd will be entitled to the full subsidy of 43.3p kw/h rate.
The decision also means that governments cannot retrospectively change cuts to such schemes. The result is not just important to the solar industry but to any industry facing such uncertainty created by such governmental attempts to increase income or decrease spending.
The original legal challenge was made by Solarcentury, Friends of the Earth and HomeSun, and the High Court ruled on 21 December that a Government proposal to cut payments for any solar scheme completed after 12 December 2011 "“ 11 days before an official consultation into the proposal had even closed "“ was unlawful.
Jeremy Leggett, Chairman, Solarcentury said, "The Supreme Court has today confirmed that the Government simply has no grounds to appeal the decision that its handling of solar Feed-in tariffs was illegal. This final step in the legal process has wasted much needed time and money and now we, the renewables industry, simply want to get on with creating our clean energy future. Renewables can only play the pivotal role necessary to deliver a new green economy if we have a stable market and investor confidence backed by lawful, predictable and carefully considered policy."
"I hope the Government is now clear that it will be held to account if it tries to act illegally and push through unlawful policy changes. We would much prefer not to have taken this path but Ministers gave us no choice. Our hope now is that we can work together again to restore the thriving jobs-rich solar sector that has been so badly undermined by Government actions."
Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal refused the Government's appeal against the High Court ruling that premature cuts to FITs for solar PV were illegal. In a unanimous decision the three judges confirmed that the Government's attempt to cut solar Feed-in tariffs from 12 December was unlawful.
The UK's solar capacity hit 1GW earlier this year, with the Government's target set at 20GW by 2020. Before the Feed-in tariff scheme there was just 26MW of solar in the UK. By comparison, Germany has 25GW of solar and installed 7.5GW alone in 2011 driven by the country's long-running feed-in tariff.
Responding to today's Supreme Court decision Friends of the Earth's Executive Director Andy Atkins said, "This is the third court that's ruled that botched Government solar plans are illegal - a landmark decision which will prevent Ministers causing industry chaos with similar subsidy cuts in future."
"The Coalition must now get on with the urgent task of restoring confidence in UK solar power. The Government recently pledged a huge increase in solar by the end of the decade; it must now spell out how it is going to achieve this. Investing in clean British energy will create thousands of new jobs and help reduce our reliance on expensive fossil fuel imports."
