So, where does that leave the solar PV industry? We’ve compiled some reactions from various sources below. Let us know what you think.

Long-term thinking
“A cut was unavoidable given the rate of installations, module price declines and the capped FiT funding envelope. 50% is a deep cut and it will slow the market significantly for a period of time. These changes will cause a shake-out in the industry where those that can be more efficient, and have diversified into other technologies or business areas have the potential to grow. Many smaller operators are likely to struggle and go under. This will be a tough time for the industry, but it may be that this makes it more sustainable and competitive in the longer term.”
– Daniel Guttmann, director of renewables and clean tech, PwC

Survival of the fittest
“I feel sorry for [smaller or newer solar companies]… The gold rush is over but the proposed new rate is sensible and sustainable. We can cope with it.”
– Kerry Burns, general manager, Solarsense UK

Clarification needed
“What the industry needs to see from the government now is a clear explanation of how, if at all, the Green Deal will serve to plug this funding gap. If this clarification is not provided, then the government is jeopardising future investment in this burgeoning and potentially vital UK industry.”
– Neil Donald, managing director, SIG Energy Management

Negative for businesses
“The government should have made more gradual cuts. It was clear what was being installed, and the knee-jerk reaction is very negative for businesses. It was certainly a bad decision to wait until the market has exploded with big investments having already been made.”
– Ash Sharma, analyst, IMS Research

Joining the dole queue
“The installation rate is likely to fall drastically, and many of the 25,000 newly employed in this industry may end up joining the dole queue.”
– Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive, Renewable Energy Association

Betrayed by Cameron
“We built a business on the back of David Cameron’s promises. He has betrayed us twice. Anybody thinking of investing in government-sponsored green opportunities, I would advise them to run away. All my business will stop with immediate effect if this goes through. It’s an extremely black day.”
– Daniel Green, chief executive, Home Sun

New rates don’t work
“I’ve just been playing around with the figures and, based on the new rates, it just doesn’t work. I’ve spent the past year putting together projects at places like Tewkesbury School and we were due to launch a share offer at the end of last week, but then we started hearing rumours about this announcement. The consultation deadline is actually after that December 12 deadline. This is a decision which has already been made, and basically, we’re stuffed.”
– Kevin Frea, community manager, the Solar Coop

Pulling the plug
“The government has cast a dark shadow over our thriving solar industry and effectively pulled the plug on countless clean energy projects across the country. If we want to wean the nation off increasingly expensive fossil fuels and free ourselves from the shackles of the ‘big six’ energy firms, the government must encourage more households and communities to generate their own home-grown electricity – not slash solar incentives.”
– Donna Hume, energy campaigner, Friends of the Earth

New projects unviable
“At a time of great economic uncertainty, FiT installations are one of the very few things that social landlords can do to support their tenants. However, the proposed level of these reductions will, quite simply, render new projects financially unviable. For the vast majority of social landlords, the risks of projects will be too big and the return on investment too small.”
– MPs, NGOs, industry stakeholders and landlords, in a letter to the Prime Minister

Focus on positives
“With production and manufacturing costs coming down in price over the last 12 months, and a typical installation now only taking one day instead of two, then it stands to reason that the 41p FiT rate was unsustainable for the long-term. Although a cut to 21p per kWh is a big drop, look back to April 2010 when the FiT was first announced. If technology and installation costs have halved, then it stands to reason that the government would half the tariff. Companies that entered the solar industry purely to join in the solar gold rush are unethical and unsustainable. The current FiT makes it too good to be true for them, and the proposed lower FiT rate will mean they cease to exist. Long-term, this is good for the industry as we need companies who are committed to the renewable cause.”
– Chris Hopkins, managing director, Ploughcroft

Our own reaction
“In the grand scheme of the UK’s economy, the amounts of money involved in incentivising the uptake of solar are trivial. It’s disappointing that the Government’s treasury didn’t share sufficiently in the vision of a UK success story to keep the cuts to a level that would allow the industry to continue to grow.”
– Chris Dace, director, Resonates

It remains to be seen if the effect of the FiTs cut will bring the deployment of small scale solar to a complete halt in the UK. If it does then we’ll lose the one initiative that promised to democratise and decentralise energy production. While the financial gains were clearly worthwhile for the individuals who invested in the technology, I believe we will forego much bigger gains for society.

Having a personal power station on your roof is something that puts you in touch with energy, possibly more than anything else. You become familiar with kilowatt-hours – both producing and consuming them. The energy that you produce is more precious than the power from the grid. You want to make the most of it. Just two weeks after having our own system installed, setting the washing machine to come on in the middle of the day has become normal behaviour. My teenage children, who used to ignore my threats of dying polar bears every time they left a light on unnecessarily, have now started turning off lights around the house.

Large-scale renewables, like offshore wind, have their place and deserve their subsidies, especially as we live in the windiest country in Europe. But there is nothing personal about offshore wind energy. For many, it’s out of sight and out of mind. Solar is personal.

I think I now better understand why Germany has rejected nuclear power. It is a country that has embraced solar energy for more than four decades, thanks largely to the innovative thinking of Herman Scheer, the architect of Germany’s original feed-in tariffs. Almost 400,000 German homes generate their own power from solar. I can only imagine that the widespread engagement with renewable energy on a personal level creates a broad and powerful cultural shift.

In the grand scheme of the UK’s economy, the amounts of money involved in incentivising the uptake of solar are trivial. It’s disappointing that the Government’s treasury didn’t share sufficiently in the vision of a UK success story to keep the cuts to a level that would allow the industry to continue to grow.

It’s also disappointing that the critics of renewable energy continue to ignore the facts when it comes to subsidies. According to the London-based research group Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Governments subsidised renewable energy sources to the tune of $46 billion in 2010. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) claims that the global direct subsidies to fossil fuels amounted to $557 billion in 2008 – more than 10 times the subsidies for renewables. Incidentally, the subsidies for fossil fuels are on the up.

Next week the IEA will publish its World Energy Outlook 2011 report. Its analysis is that unless we act urgently and boldly the door for a two-degree trajectory (i.e. limiting the rise in global temperatures to just two degrees) may be closing. In retrospect, the few hundred million pounds that the Government is going to save by cutting the FiTs may have been a bargain.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has set a target to install 53 million smart meters across the UK over the next 20 years.

Research from energy switching website uSwitch found that 27% of homes are receiving incorrect energy bills. Smart meters help to overcome this problem by showing you how much gas and electricity you are using and the cost of that energy. They then feed the information back to the energy supplier to provide accurate meter readings.

The Government estimates that smart meters will save energy suppliers over £300 million a year by removing the need to take meter readings or deal with bill disputes; whilst consumers will save £23 per year on their energy bills because they’re more aware of how much energy they use as the meter is more visible and not hidden in a cupboard.

However, the results of a 12-month study by Dr Tom Hargreaves, of the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia found that “…the effects quickly wear off after an initial burst of energy saving when the monitors are brand new…In some homes, their use was abandoned; in others there were rows over energy consumption between parents and teenagers or between partners.”

When we first got our smart meter, I admit, we went little crazy and started turning appliances on and off to see how much energy they used. But 12 months down the line, our smart meter lies abandoned in our hall gathering dust.

But owning a smart meter has changed the way I think about how I use power in my home. When I was younger I could never understand why my Dad was always telling me to “turn off the lights”. But when your smart meter is showing you how much it costs to keep the lights on unnecessarily, you quickly reach for that light switch. Since we installed our smart meter we are more conscious about leaving lights on, and we switch things like the TV and computer off at the wall, rather than leaving them on standby.

I may only be saving £23 a year, but that’s £23 extra that I now have to spend on make-up and chocolate – and that can’t be a bad thing!

Analysis by the think tank Policy Exchange indicates that bill payers could save up to £12 billion if there was greater flexibility in how the UK meets the target. In the Guardian last week, its senior research fellow Guy Newey made the case that the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, could make further savings by ditching the target altogether.

His view is that the rollout of offshore wind burdens the economy with unnecessary costs, and will do “nothing” to reduce emissions in the electricity sector in the next 10 years. “The current system of picking winners for massive subsidies is flawed and risks damaging other parts of the economy,” he commented.

Why don’t you let us know your thoughts?

Welcome to Resonates, a marketing communications company based in Newbury, Berkshire. We are looking for a business development manager to help us sustain our rapid growth in the low-carbon and renewable energy sector.

The primary focus of the role is finding and following up new business opportunities. You will be responsible for:

• researching, calling and qualifying prospects,
• working with our marketing consultants to develop proposals,
• meeting prospects to present our solutions and close business,
• ensuring a smooth path from winning the business through to delivery, and
• updating our new business database with call histories, notes and actions.

Other responsibilities include networking at industry events, finding and researching new leads, and creating and contributing to marketing campaigns using a variety of media.

Your success will be measured in terms of new revenue that you bring in to the business.

Desired skills and experience
You must have a proven track record of developing new business using a consultative approach to sales. We are looking for someone who, in addition to being commercially aware, has excellent persuasion and negotiation skills – someone who is confident and personable, and who listens and asks questions.

Your written and verbal communication skills must be outstanding. Communication, after all, is what our business is all about. The ideal candidate is someone who already has experience of the marketing communications industry and/or the renewable energy sector.

Company description
Our approach to PR and marketing communications focuses squarely on getting business results. We design everything we do to help our clients achieve their marketing objectives.

What makes us so good at this? Unlike traditional agencies we:

• research their markets so we can plan their campaigns properly, using reliable information,
• do their copywriting for them, to make sure we deliver their campaigns on time, and
• have no vested interest in any media, so we always choose what’s best for the job.

Send your CV and covering letter to jobs@resonates.com

The following summarises the survey’s findings:
• 77% of respondents said that high capital costs were a major barrier to adoption
• 79% said that concerns over the ROI was also a significant barrier
• Around 70% had made basic low-cost improvements, such as providing controls for temperature and lighting
• Only 12% had invested in microgeneration technologies

Encouragingly, the report also found that 83% of respondents were interested in investing to save energy costs but needed to know more about the potential ROI. So for companies wanting to promote their energy initiatives or green products, the message is clear: in order to convert this interest into sales, you need to educate the market about the benefits of energy-efficient technologies, and maybe provide some evidence that relates to ROI.

The RHI was designed to encourage the adoption of low-carbon technologies such as ground source heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar water heaters. Once the installation is registered, the tariffs are guaranteed by law for 20 years and are index-linked. The tariff levels are determined by the technology and size of the installation.

Last week DECC confirmed that it is likely that approval for commercial RHI payments will go ahead but with “possible reductions on the tariff for large biomass installations”.

This setback is sure to knock investor confidence. And it must be frustrating for companies wanting to invest in green initiatives and for those supplying the low-carbon technologies.

Are you looking to install low-carbon technologies for your business? Has this announcement given you second thoughts? Do you think the Government will ever give the RHI the green light? Tell us what you think.

The first three sessions were, in one way or another, about crisis communications. For many markets, it’s good practice to prepare for when things go wrong, and from a best-practice perspective, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill story was a great example of how not to manage a crisis. It’s staggering that one of the biggest companies in the world, operating in a high risk industry, could get so many things so badly wrong.

But having spent the last few years working in the renewable energy and cleantech sectors, which seems to be populated by energetic, positive people, I have to say it was all a bit depressing. Don’t businesses operating in the traditional energy sector have anything good to say about what they do? It’s not surprising that the energy sector fairs so badly in the Edelman Trust Barometer survey.

To be fair, there was general consensus among the PR professionals in the room that energy companies needed to do a much better job of telling their success stories. Getting some goodwill ‘in the bank’ is at least one way of preparing proactively for when the next disaster strikes…

This year I visited the south of France and spent a day at Font-Romeu; a place that boasts approximately 300 sunny days a year and has really clean air. Because of this, it was chosen as the site for the world’s largest solar furnace.

The solar furnace was built in 1970. 63 flat mirrors track the sun and concentrate the light on a reflector. The reflector then concentrates the rays to produce 1MW at a temperature of 33,000 degrees centigrade to power a furnace, which is used in the production of steel or aluminium.

What is baffling is that this furnace was created in 1970, and since then only a handful have been built across the world. There have been talks in the UK and USA about replicating the solar furnace for home owners, but there is no outcome yet.

It seems that this is a positive and innovative way of using natural resources on a grand scale; so why are we not building more?

In a recent survey of 500 journalists, 62% said that PR agencies were their number one resource when researching a news story. And 22% cited a press release as their first stop.

Whether you’re launching the UK branch of your solar empire, promoting your new wind turbine or environmental consultancy service, or have just finished a great biomass installation, PR is the most valuable tool if you want the media to tell your story.

But a press release is more than just a boring statement of what you did. The media is flooded every day by thousands of press releases so yours has to stand out from the crowd. Try considering the following to help your press release to shine:

1) Make sure your press release is interesting. Try capturing a new angle or different perspective.
2) Use a headline that’s going to grab the journalist’s attention.
3) Capture the main points in the first paragraph: who? what? when? where? why? how?
4) Include a third party quote – it gives your story credibility.
5) Add links in your press release to direct the journalist to your website for more information.
6) Attach some images – journalists love pictures because they help bring a story to life.
7) Don’t forget your contact details.

Writing good press releases comes with practice and experience. If you’d like an outside perspective, just send your latest release to enquiry@resonates.com