Minister for Climate Change, Greg Barker, has vowed to put “rocket boosters” under the commercial solar sector to stimulate uptake of solar pv interest in the commercial and industrial sectors.
Despite the recent news that the UK broke solar generation records last month (8% of total electricity generation on a particular weekend), Barker is keen to stimulate a faster uptake of solar, particularly for mid-size commercial roof tops.
In the pipeline are plans to increase the limit of systems from 50kw to 1mw (1000kw) looking at how transferring panels to a new property can be done without losing Government initiatives. Furthermore, Barker has scheduled a roundtable on 9th September to allow landlords, estate agents, lawyers, retailers and solar developers to discuss practical ways of lifting certain barriers that currently prevent solar installations.
Barker is adamant that the Government is still on target to meet their 2050 target of reducing carbon emissions by 80%, with solar being a major input to meeting this target. He further commented that by 2020, if the interest in commercial solar installations can be stimulated further, we are well on our way to our target of generating 20GW of electricity through solar pv installs (collectively between domestic and commercial). At present, this figure is around 3GW.