Just days after a landslide election victory, the UK’s new Labor authorities has hit the bottom working and is already making progress on growing solar energy deployment.
The UK simply held an election on July 4, the place the nation declared its independence from the Tories (heh) and handed Labor a historic landslide victory.
The new Labor authorities has made inexperienced power coverage a precedence, desirous to quickly enhance photo voltaic and wind energy.
In service of that purpose, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband permitted three photo voltaic farms this week, on the finish of his first full week on the job. The farms are in Suffolk/Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Rutland – all in japanese England. The first two farms will generate 500MW of electrical energy, the latter will generate 350MW.
The farms had been blocked by the earlier Tory administration, which Miliband rapidly labored to resolve.
Combined, these three initiatives account for 1.35GW, or about 2/3 as a lot as the entire photo voltaic capability put in within the UK final yr. This quantity of electrical energy is sufficient to provide about 400,000 houses with electrical energy.
Miliband additionally mentioned he needed to start out a “rooftop revolution” by rewriting planning guidelines to allow extra rooftop photo voltaic, each for present houses and for potential consumers. which may purchase newly constructed homes with panels already put in. (We reported on the same transfer in Michigan final week that made it simpler for owners in an HOA to put in rooftop photo voltaic.)
I need to unleash a UK photo voltaic rooftop revolution. We encourage builders and owners in any approach we are able to to ship this win-win expertise to thousands and thousands of UK addresses so folks can present their very own electrical energy, reduce their payments and on the similar time assist struggle local weather change
Ed Miliband, UK Energy Secretary
Those laws have not been rewritten but, however we’ll see extra about them sooner or later.
In addition to the weekend’s bulletins, final week Miliband lifted restrictions positioned on offshore wind which amounted to a “de facto” ban on its set up. Previous coverage blocked any venture that obtained any public push in any way, no matter how huge that push was – permitting NIMBYs to cease any progress on Britain’s power future.
The new initiatives and insurance policies work in the direction of Labour’s purpose to double onshore wind, triple solar energy, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030. Labor additionally plans to introduce a brand new owned state energy firm, GB Energy, to speed up the decarbonization of the power provide, which we must always hear about within the coming weeks.
Renewable power is seen as essential for Britain not solely due to its lack of air pollution, however as a result of it could assist present power safety. Most of Europe’s methane comes from Russia, which means that working electrical energy from fossil fuel helps finance the invasion of Ukraine. Not solely is that this unpopular throughout the continent and within the UK specifically, but it surely additionally contributes to fluctuating electrical energy costs for Britons. Installing extra home sources of electrical energy within the type of wind and photo voltaic will assist scale back volatility and dependence on international power sources.
If you might be considering of going photo voltaic within the US, it’s all the time a good suggestion to get quotes from a number of installers. To ensure you discover a dependable, reliable photo voltaic installer close to you who affords aggressive pricing, try EnergySage, a free service that makes it straightforward so that you can go photo voltaic. It has tons of of pre-vetted photo voltaic installers competing for your online business, making certain you get high quality options and save 20-30% in comparison with going it alone. Plus, it is free to make use of, and you will not obtain gross sales calls till you select an installer and share your cellphone quantity with them.
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