Clean Energy Cashback Scheme for Green Electricity from Homes
The UK’s feed in tariff which pays homeowners and businesses money for generating clean green electricity to feed into the national grid starts in April 2010 and a recent survey suggests that if the incentives where higher more people would sign up for the scheme.
The government backed scheme called clean energy cashback is set to pay homes and businesses a rate of 36p per kilowatt hour produced from small renewable energy systems which although generous than other schemes around the world is not seen as enough for people to invest into green technology for their homes and commercial premises.
A YouGov survey produced this week which was commissioned by Friends of the Earth, the Cooperative Group and the Renewable Energy Association showed that a massive 71% of those surveyed would consider fitting green technology such as solar panels to their homes if they were paid enough to do so.
Of the 2,000 people questioned a majority 70% also said that they would be willing to pay a little more on their electricity bills (10p per month) for the government to produce a more ambitious green energy plan on top of the already announced £1.17 per month until 2013.
On the side of green energy production the 2,000 people were told that the UK currently produces the least amount of energy from renewable sources of the 27 countries in the EU a massive 82% said that the current government’s record on producing energy from renewable sources was unacceptable.
The government’s announcement of the feed in tariff entitled clean energy cashback hopes to spread the investment by thousands of people in the UK to develop mini green renewable power plants that feed the national grid. The UK’s current record is poor with less than 2% of the nation’s energy coming from renewable sources and when that’s compared with Germany who have 14% of the nation’s energy from green sites you can see that the country has a long way to go. It is though that Germany’s record is so great because of the generous allowances under their own feed in tariff rates that are some of the highest in the EU. Additionally over 70% of Germany’s green electricity is sourced from people on feed in tariffs.
At the time of the government’s announcement they had provided rates for their own feed in tariffs for the installation of solar panels and small wind turbines as follows:
- less than 4kwp new build – 31p per kWh generated
- less than 4kwp retro-fitted – 36.5p
- between 4kwp and 10kwp – 31p
- between 10kwp and 100kwp – 28p
So could you make money by installing a wind generator at the bottom of your garden? The Guardian newspaper had an interesting table that suggests that the total cost of installation would be around £50,000 which is made up of purchasing a wind turbine that produces 25,000kWh of power each year and £9,000 for the installation costs. They estimated that you would then receive a payment under the feed in tariff of around £6,250 per year (based on a FiT of 23p per kWh produced) which provides a 12% return each year. It’s estimated that current wind turbines would last around 20 years so that’s not too bad.
More information on the clean energy cash back scheme is due to be announced shortly.