Crazy cuts!

The government's proposals to cut the solar PV feed-in tariff by 87% defy all logic.

• They put over 2,000 London jobs at risk (and 27,000 nationally).
• They damage a growing industry wshen it is within about three years of needing no more subsidy.
• They make it harder for the UK to meet its climate change goals. (Not that it would anyway but why undermine such success as we have?)

 Solar and wind are low risk renewable energy technologies that are developing fast. Instead the government seems to prefer nuclear - a technology with high-costs and a near 100% record of delivering late and over budget.

How Cameron is destroying the climate

The Campaign Against Climate Change has summarised the government's recent changes in climate change policy. CACC has found 11 changes that encourage energy use, discourage energy efficiency and tilt the supply-side balance in favour of fossil fuels and against renewables. It's s systematic assault on the climate.

They are (and I quote):

Changes that encourage energy use

• Massive road-building plans - £15 billion road-building spree still going ahead amid austerity read more
• Planning an unnecessary new runway in the South East (and quietly ditching previous pledges on Heathrow) read more

Changes that discourage energy efficiency

• Scrapping the Green Deal for home insulation - What's worse than the weak Green Deal scheme? No support at all. read more
• Scrapping the Zero Carbon Homes target - supported by housebuilders as well as environmentalists read more
• Removing tax incentives to buy less-polluting cars read more

Changes that encourage fossil fuel extraction and use

• More planning changes to fast-track fracking - only 16 weeks allowed for councils or ministers step in read more
• New tax breaks for fossil fuels - £1.3 billion more announced in March - no cuts here! read more

Changes that discourage renewable energy  

• Removing onshore wind subsidies - support to end in April 2016 read more
• Cuts to solar subsidies - endangering the industry in order to save households just 50p-£1.20 a year on bills read more
• Making renewables pay the climate change levy - this was meant to encourage renewables: it will cost the industry  £3.9 billion read more
• Planning changes to block onshore wind - making it extremely difficult, even when communities support it. read more

Enfield has London’s first solar mosque

This is a guest post by Harfiyah Haleem, a 38 Degrees activist based in Southgate.

“Palmers Green mosque has just announced the installation of its 15 kW array of solar panels. I'm urging them to have a celebration and invite lots of other mosques and interested people.  I hope this will be the first of many solar mosques in London and add to the few already established in other places in the UK and around the world.  (Jordan has announced a plan to make all its 6000 mosques solar.)

Some churches have already got solar panels.  Community buildings usually have large roofs that are suitable for sizable arrays, and many mosques are new-build or still being built so offer more possibilities than old and decaying roofs.  I've also discovered www.Polysolar.co.uk which provides transparent solar PV glass that can be used for windows and conservatories etc. and have passed this information to Palmers Green mosque for their new extension plan, which includes a large glass roof. 

We already have a dozen or so London mosques interested, including Edmonton Islamic Cultural Soc., and are trying (feebly and without funding) to get them to work together to reach a critical mass that can attract social enterprise investment, or to start their own shari'a-compliant inter-mosque loans/investment scheme.  London Sustainability Exchange (LSx) and 10:10 Solar Schools are doing their best to help and have held an inter-mosque workshop on the subject at Al-Manaar mosque in the Westbourne Grove area."