In recent days the Government have dropped its former flagship policy, the Green Deal, has announced the end of its zero carbon buildings policy, has announced the end of subsidies for onshore wind and solar farms, is removing discounted vehicle excise duty for greener vehicles and even as I write are consulting on removing some benefits from community energy projects. DECC themselves state, '..we are aware that these changes will have a particular impact upon the community sector. As part of the later FIT review which will take place later this year, we may consider whether there is a case for reintroducing pre-accreditation and pre-registration for communities or other groups as appropriate.' The potential removal of pre-accreditation and pre-registration from the FIT will make community projects such as the one we are considering much harder to complete. Without a guarantee for the tariff that a given scheme will receive, raising finance from share offers and loans, will be much more difficult. The risk of degressions reducing the tariff level up to the commissioning date, will have a big impact. We await to see if the FiT review mentioned above delivers sufficient support to enable future community energy schemes. 

On the other hand the Government is promoting unpopular shale gas fracking and continuing against major technical and financial problems to promote the new nuclear power station at Hinkley which cannot possibly be built and producing electricity until the mid 2020's. The Energy Group will be making a submission to the community energy consultation in August and will be lobbying hard for a strong Government position on reducing carbon dioxide emissions at the Paris climate change talks later this year.

To demonstrate how difficult a task it is to reduce a nation's CO2 emissions, try out this 2050 Calculator for fun!