Panel of Supreme Justices refused the Government leave to appeal - 43.3p confirmed

EricMears

I was always under the impression that the 43p rate was offered until April 2012 or earlier if scheme runs out of funding.

Can't therefore see why they were 'consulting' in November/December. I placed my order last summer when ROI was pretty attractive and there was little risk of scheme ending prematurely. I thought it an unacceptable gamble to hang on in case capital costs fell before FIT rates.

Have to agree that the whole scheme is economically unsound - but it's unfair to blame those of us who took advantage of it being offered. Direct any complaints to your MP or the 'eurocrats' ! But take some comfort from the fact that if government weren't paying this sum to panel-owners they'd almost certainly have to pay a very similar sum into the European pot by way of a 'fine'. I'm sure I'm a more deserving case than Brussels !

jamesingram

henchard wrote: »

Whilst your argument has some merit you can hardly blame the solar industry for the lamentable 'c0ck!!! ups' by the government. The whole tariff payment system could have easily been linked to the average wholesale price of PV panels at the onset. Then to announce the cut in tariffs so quickly and before the end of consultation was completely barking.

Unfortunately it ain't necessarily over as some there is some talk of solar companies now taking legal action against the government for loss of business.

You can't blame the business or the consumers for taking advantage of a poorly designed scheme. The one good thing to come out of it is that it shows that the law will as it is written will be upheld and it may help prevent future governments retrospectively tinkering with payments (thus engendering future confidence).

yes , see my second post , I believe HMG are responsble for the current situation , not the solar industry, I do think they haven't helped themselve though.

Cardew

EricMears wrote: »

I was always under the impression that the 43p rate was offered until April 2012 or earlier if scheme runs out of funding.


Have to agree that the whole scheme is economically unsound - but it's unfair to blame those of us who took advantage of it being offered. Direct any complaints to your MP or the 'eurocrats' ! But take some comfort from the fact that if government weren't paying this sum to panel-owners they'd almost certainly have to pay a very similar sum into the European pot by way of a 'fine'. I'm sure I'm a more deserving case than Brussels !

I don't think I have seen a single post on MSE criticising those who have taken advantage of the scheme. If something is on offer, why not take advantage.

The criticism IMO is aimed at those who attempt to justify a patently stupid scheme.

However where you are in error is to state that is the Government are paying this sum to panel owners. The Government pay nothing; it is the 99% of electricity consumers who haven't got panels who are directly paying this money by means of a levy on their bills.

EricMears

Cardew wrote: »

I don't think I have seen a single post on MSE criticising those who have taken advantage of the scheme. If something is on offer, why not take advantage.

The criticism IMO is aimed at those who attempt to justify a patently stupid scheme.

However where you are in error is to state that is the Government are paying this sum to panel owners. The Government pay nothing; it is the 99% of electricity consumers who haven't got panels who are directly paying this money by means of a levy on their bills.

Not really an 'error' !.

It's a well known 'slogan' that the Government have no money at all - except that levied from taxpayers or borrowed (on their behalf).

It is of course a Government department who set the FIT rates and coordinate who pays what. And it would be another Government department who would have to pay the fines when the 'green generation initiative targets' were missed.

grahamc2003

EricMears wrote: »

Not really an 'error' !.

It's a well known 'slogan' that the Government have no money at all - except that levied from taxpayers or borrowed (on their behalf).

It is of course a Government department who set the FIT rates and coordinate who pays what. And it would be another Government department who would have to pay the fines when the 'green generation initiative targets' were missed.

Regarding the 'error' bit - what you said was patently incorrect, and those things are usually called 'errors'. No problem making the odd error.

You raise some good points about what various government departments do with regard to fits. I've always thought it very simplistic (and incorrect) when I've read people calculating thr cost of fits, by multiplying the expected solar generation by the fit rate. That certainly gives one cost of the fits, but there are other (I suspect massive costs) which don't seem to get a mention. Like the cost of civil servants and outside consultants who devised the scheme, wrote the rules and finally implemented it, and also those who keep it going. I should imagine there are several hundred civil servants salories and pensions to add onto the cost of the fit system, plus the costs of the supplier's admin too.

So a direct cost to electricity customers for (the major part of the) direct fit, but also a burden on taxpyers of undisclosed magnitude to keep several hundred civil servants/very expenisve outside consultants in their jobs, imo.

jamesingram

Graham , surely this would apply to all transactions of government and business and would generally be disregarded in simple costings.
FITs is paid by the electricial generation industry, DECC give them a amount to cover admin of the scheme from the thier own budget.
The electricial generation industry will of course look to recover these costs somewhere.

re. personal individuals benefitting from FITs,
as they saying goes , gift horse etc..

EricMears

Cardew wrote: »

it is the 99% of electricity consumers who haven't got panels who are directly paying this money by means of a levy on their bills.

Even that is an 'error' of course ! The levy is paid by all electricity consumers. Having panels on your roof does not exempt you from paying that - unless of course you have a full 'off-grid' installation so manage to avoid getting electricity bills.

Cardew

EricMears wrote: »

Not really an 'error' !.

It's a well known 'slogan' that the Government have no money at all - except that levied from taxpayers or borrowed (on their behalf).

It is of course a Government department who set the FIT rates and coordinate who pays what. And it would be another Government department who would have to pay the fines when the 'green generation initiative targets' were missed.

Of course it was an error!

There is a huge difference between paying the subsidy from taxes and a levy on all customers - for the same consumption, the poorest pay the same as the wealthiest.

The levy is paid by all electricity consumers

Methinks you are clutching at straws;)

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

I don't think I have seen a single post on MSE criticising those who have taken advantage of the scheme. If something is on offer, why not take advantage.

That's odd, because I've seen dozens and dozens of posts from a certain 'Cardew' moralising that FITs takes money from the poor and gives to the rich. You used to say 'from pensioners' till my pensioner father asked me to point out to you that he does extremely well from Green Tariff funded insulation schemes and general taxation winter fuel payments.

Graham used to post the same, but you both stopped a month ago when he got PV installed.

You're calling the scheme morally wrong, yet claim not to be tarring participants of said scheme with the same brush? Strange differentiation. Haven't every single one of your arguments been patiently and fully answered by many on the 'Good or Bad' thread? Are you clutching at straws again?

The idea behind the scheme, to artificially speed up the introduction of an additional source of renewable power is sound. The governments implementation of the scheme since early/mid 2011 has been a disaster.

Mart.

EricMears

Cardew wrote: »

Of course it was an error!

There is a huge difference between paying the subsidy from taxes and a levy on all customers - for the same consumption, the poorest pay the same as the wealthiest.

Methinks you are clutching at straws;)

Take yourself back to item #1 of this thread. Or to save a little scrolling, I'll remind you of the thread title : "Panel of Supreme Justices refused the Government leave to appeal "

Doesn't that give you just the merest inkling that the Government might have an interest in this scheme ?

Whilst the RECs are indeed collecting the levies from all customers and dispensing FIT payments to those qualifying, they do both as agents of the Government and (as noted above) receive some admin costs for so doing. Were it simply a whim of their own, RECs would be free to pay as much as they like to as many mini-generators as they want and recover the whole of that cost from their customers.

I've said it before but it will stand repeating: the Government don't actually pay for anything; they collect cash from one set of people and transfer it to another. Your Old Age Pension won't actually be a gift from DWP, it will be collected on your behalf from NI contributors by the DWP and paid out to you.

I'm not entirely sure how the payments from consumers are calculated but strongly suspect that they'll be related to the unit cost of electricity - i.e. the poorest consumers struggling to light a couple of rooms may not have to pay quite as much as the wealthy estate with a couple of megawatts of "Son et Lumiere" to fund. But in any case, we worked out in another thread that the average household will be paying something in the low teens of pounds per annum to fund the FIT scheme; coincidentally much the same as it would cost the Government to pay fines to Brussels should we fail to meet their Green Energy targets. You might think that cabinet ministers should have a whip-round amongst themselves to pay such a fine but I can confidently predict they'll decide to collect it from the general population (but probably with higher rate taxpayers chipping in a bit more than the poorest in society).