Mayor of London Calls For Solar FiTs to Stay the Same

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is adding his weight behind growing calls for the Government not to make such drastic cuts to solar subsidies under the feed-in tariff (Fit) scheme.

According to the Financial Times, Mr Johnson has written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging him to keep the FiT rate at its current level, saying it would "send the right signals to the market".

In the letter to George Osborne, despite acknowledging the current financial constraints, Mr Johnson says: "While Government will argue that the costs of solar panels have reduced, the costs of inverters, stands and labour have not".

He goes on to warn that the level of cuts which have been proposed – slashing the feed-in tariff rate from 43.3p for every kilowatt hour of electricity generated to 21p – will undermine the UK’s development and growth in the renewable energy sector. Not least because a reduction of 50% “slowly suffocates the growth that the policy has so far encouraged.”

Ministers will be defending the proposals to cut solar PV subsidies in the House of Commons on Wednesday, during an opposition day debate.