Solar mania will cast a shadow over Britain - Telegraph

Solar mania will cast a shadow over Britain
Big subsidies to cover fields with solar panels are a huge waste of money, says James Delingpole.


James Delingpole
Published: 8:13AM GMT 08 Nov 2010

One of the things for which Britain is justly famous is its lush, green, spectacularly beautiful countryside. One of the things for which Britain is not at all famous is its endless sunshine. Put these two basic facts together and you might reach one obvious conclusion: that any taxpayer-funded scheme to carpet that unspoilt landscape in solar panels in order to generate electricity at nearly three times the market cost is bound to end in disaster.

You know this. I know this. Maybe one of us should have a word with Chris Huhne. In a scheme so bizarre and suicidally destructive you'd think it could only be the work of a devilish Britainophobic double-agent, our Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is planning to bribe farmers with billions of pounds of our money to turn their land into solar electricity plants.

The incentives are amazingly powerful. Under the "feed-in tariff" scheme launched in April as part of an attempt to meet EU targets on renewable energy, farmers are being offered subsidies as high as £1,500 an acre to cover their green fields with shiny, black and silver solar arrays. This means that a farmer with 35 acres to spare stands to make £52,500 a year. What's more, this has been guaranteed, tax-free, by the Government for the next 25 years.

You can hardly blame farmers in favourable areas (Devon and Cornwall, especially: in south-west England the "sun rush" has already attracted 70 planning applications to local authorities) for scurrying in to take advantage of this money-for-old-rope scheme before the payment structure is reviewed in 2012. Nor is it surprising that canny foreign investors, led by German and Chinese solar manufacturers (the most obvious beneficiaries of David Cameron's vaunted drive for "green jobs"), have been hurrying to cash in, too.

What almost defies belief, though, is that a Coalition Government supposedly dedicated to cutting costs and boosting economic growth should have fallen for this energy chimera. There is a very good reason why Britain has not heretofore relied overmuch on solar energy: as a northern European country that doesn't
get that much sun even in the height of summer, we are simply not designed for it.

Already, several hundred million pounds have been squandered through government subsidy to build up a solar power network around Britain. How much energy does this entire network produce? A total of 2.3 megawatts (MW). To put that into perspective, a medium-sized gas-fired power station produces an annual 800 MW. And a medium-sized coal-fired station between 1,500 and 2,000 MW. In other words, we would need to build nearly 1,000 times more solar panels than we already have in order to equal the power generated by just one conventional power station.

Even the most fervent believer in the perils of "Anthropogenic Global Warming" ought surely to be able to appreciate that this makes no sense whatsoever. Such benefits as may accrue from CO2 reduction will be vastly outweighed by the damage done to our beautiful countryside. And the financial havoc it will wreak – not least in the £8.6 billion it will add to our energy bills – is almost too horrible to contemplate.

But contemplate it we must – and can, by observing the recent experience of (much sunnier) Spain. Three years ago, its socialist Zapatero government launched a massive wind and solar energy programme, underpinned by generous "feed-in tariffs" on the Huhne model. Alternative energy investors flooded in. Some poor families even took out loans to install solar panels to take advantage of the generous returns promised by the government. Much was made of all the green jobs which would accrue as result.

Three years on, however, Spain's bright solar future has burned to ashes. The Zapatero government – near-bankrupted by the 126 billion euros of obligations it already owes to renewable energy investors – has had to renege on its subsidies promises. Countless small investors have been ruined. And according to the Spanish economist Dr Gabriel Calzada, the effects of all this wasted spending have been ruinous: through every "green job" created as a result of government subsidy, another 2.2 jobs have been lost in the real economy.

Welcome to Chris Huhne's green future: so bright perhaps we should wear shades.